Why does hydrogen peroxide exhibit a dihedral angle of $111.5^\circ$ in the gaseous state? And a dihedral angle of $90.2^\circ$ in the crystalline phase?
I know that in general, there is likely to be more hydrogen bonding in the crystalline phase than in the vapor phase.
But what's up with 1) the bond angles themselves in the first place and 2) the bond angle expansion in the gas phase? How can one rationalize them?
I know that there exist lone pairs on the oxygens and lone-pair/lone-pair repulsion should probably be minimized, but what it is about these conformers that minimizes energy? I'm guessing that we'd also want to minimize eclipsed and gauche interactions ... Newman projection time?
It seems that there is only one Newman projection possible for $\ce{HOOH}$; i.e. we'll have the inevitable lone-pair/lone-pair interaction, and the lone-pair/hydrogen interaction. I guess all we can do is minimize these interactions; i.e. the energy-minimized conformer is probably not the one with them all eclipsed. However, why does it seem that the energy-minimized conformer for vapor $\ce{HOOH}$ is one that puts the lone-pairs so close to each other in terms of dihedral angles?