Element Lewis structure

Valence shell electrons of the atoms in a molecule are either shared or unshared. The shared electrons are found in either o ox it bonds. Unshared electrons are found in AOs (usually hybrid AOs for first-row elements). Lewis structures provide a way to indicate the shared and unshared pairs of electrons in molecules. Sometimes, however, it is possible to indicate the electron distribution in molecules by more than one Lewis structure. For example, a car-boxylate anion can be represented by two equivalent but different Lewis structures. 

Lewis structures in which second row elements own or share more than eight valence electrons are especially unstable and make no contribution to the true structure (The octet rule may be ex ceeded for elements beyond the second row)... 

Section 1 3 The most common kind of bonding involving carbon is covalent bond ing A covalent bond is the sharing of a pair of electrons between two atoms Lewis structures are written on the basis of the octet rule, which limits second row elements to no more than eight electrons m their valence shells In most of its compounds carbon has four bonds... 

These structures (without the circles) are referred to as Lewis structures. In writing Lewis structures, only the valence electrons written above are shown, because they are the ones that participate in covalent bonding. For the main-group elements, the only ones dealt with here, the number of valence electrons is equal to the last digit of the group number in the periodic table (Table 7.1). Notice that elements in a given main group all have the same number of valence electrons. This explains why such elements behave similarly when they react to form covalently bonded species. 

To check on the validity of a Lewis structure, verify that each atom has an octet or a duplet. As we shall see in Section 2.10, a common exception to this rule arises when the central atom is an atom of an element in Period 3 or higher. Such an atom can accommodate more than eight electrons in its valence shell. Consequently, the most stable Lewis structure may be one in which the central atom has more than eight electrons. 

The following Lewis structure was drawn for a Period 3 element. Identify the element. 

Eight electrons surround the oxygen atom, a Row 2 element, so this is the correct Lewis structure. 

Stable noble gas compounds are restricted to those of xenon. Most of these compounds involve bonds between xenon and the most electronegative elements, fluorine and oxygen. More exotic compounds containing Xe—S, Xe—H, and Xe—C bonds can be formed under carefully controlled conditions, for example in solid matrices at liquid nitrogen temperature. The three Lewis structures below are examples of these compounds in which the xenon atom has a steric munber of 5 and trigonal bipyramidal electron group geometry. 

C09-0083. Fluorine forms compounds whose chemical formula is XF4 with elements from groups 14, 16, and 18. Determine the Lewis structure, describe the shape, and draw a ball-and-stick model of Gep4, SeF4, and Xep4. 

C09-0138. In the following reactions, phosphorus forms a bond to a Row 2 element. In one reaction, phosphoms donates two electrons to make the fourth bond, but in the other reaction, phosphorus accepts two electrons to make the fourth bond. Use Lewis structures of starting materials and products to determine in which reaction phosphoms is a donor and in which it acts as an acceptor. 

Several elements in row 3 of the periodic table form itt bonds to oxygen through side-by-side overlap of 3 cf and 2 p orbitals. An example is the sulfate anion, whose Lewis structure appears in Figure 10-48. The steric number... 

There are also molecules that are exceptions to the octet rule because one of the atoms has fewer, rather than more than, eight electrons in its valence shell in the Lewis structure (Figure 1.19). These molecules are formed by the elements on the left-hand side of the periodic table that have only one, two, or three electrons in their valence shells and cannot therefore attain an octet by using each of their electrons to form a covalent bond. The molecules LiF, BeCl2, BF3, and AIC13 would be examples. However, as we have seen and as we will discuss in detail in Chapters 8 and 9, these molecules are predominately ionic. In terms of a fully ionic model, each atom has a completed shell, and the anions obey the octet rule. Only if they are regarded as covalent can they be considered to be exceptions to the octet rule. Covalent descriptions of the bonding in BF3 and related molecules have therefore... 

The best Lewis-type representation of the bonding in OCF3 would therefore appear to be as in 4, even though the carbon atom does not obey the octet rule. This molecule can be considered to be a hypervalent molecule of carbon just like the hypervalent molecules of the period 3 elements, such as SFfi. We introduced the atom hypervalent in Chapter 2 and we discuss it in more detail in Chapter 9. But it is important to emphasize that the bonds are very polar. In short, OCF3 has one very polar CO double bond and three very polar CF single bonds. A serious limitation of Lewis structures is that they do not give any indication of the polarity of the bonds, and much of the discussion about the nature of the bonding in this molecule has resulted from a lack of appreciation of this limitation. 

Not only molecules with LLPCN > 4, but all molecules of the elements in period 3 and beyond in their higher valence states, including most of their numerous oxides, oxoacids, and related molecules such as SO3 and (H0)2S04 should be regarded as hypervalent if AO bonds are described as double bonds (1). However, Lewis did not regard these molecules as exceptions to the octet rule because he wrote the Lewis structures of these molecules with single bonds and the appropriate formal charges (2). 

A Following the strategy outlined in the textbook, we begin by drawing a plausible Lewis structure for the cation in question. In this case, the Lewis structure must contain 20 valence electrons. The skeletal structure for the cation has a chlorine atom, the least electronegative element present, in the central position. Next we join the terminal chlorine and fluorine atoms to the central chlorine atom via single covalent bonds and then complete the octets for all three atoms. 

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