On Oct 6, 2010, at 10:41 AM, Han Sen Soo wrote:

Hello Scott, Just to make sure I understand what you mean, are you saying that in your 3 atom system, the S1 and S2 atoms have relatively fixed locations but A may have large vibrational amplitudes in the A-S1 and A-S2 directions? So the round-trip 3 atom MS path has a small sigma^2 value since the variation in the A-S1-S2-A path is dictated by the more or less fixed S1 and S2 end-points (with minimal perpendicular contribution), whereas the 2 individual SS paths have large sigma^2 value due to the large A-S vibrations?

Yes--you explained it far better than I did. :) --Scott Calvin Sarah Lawrence College