Potassium metal crystallizes in a body-centered cubic structure. ...

Question

Potassium metal crystallizes in a body-centered cubic structure. 
Draw one unit cell, and try to draw an electron-dot 
structure for bonding of the central K atom to its nearestneighbor 
K atoms. What is the problem?

Accepted Answer

Hi everyone. This problem reads the lithium metal has a body centered cubic structure when it crystallizes. What is the illustration of its unit cell? Is it possible to draw an electron dot structure showing the bond between the central atom and its nearest neighboring atom. So we have a two part question here. The first is the illustration of its unit cell. Okay. And the second part of the problem is asking if it's possible to draw an electron dot structure. Alright, so a key point that is mentioned here is that this lithium metal has a body centered cubic structure. And what we mean? Or what is meant by body centered cubic structure is there's one central atom and eight corner atoms. So let's go ahead and draw our one central atom and r eight corner atoms are going to go ahead and number them. Okay, so we have one two three four five six seven eight. So this is what we mean by body centered cubic structure. So we're going to go ahead and do the illustration of this unit cell. Okay, so We're gonna go from 1-2. So 1, 2, 3 and four All connect and we have that one central atom And then we have 5, 6, 7 and eight also connect. All right, so from here we have one is gonna connect to five. Okay, we have three is going to connect to six. Let's draw that straight. So three connects to six. Okay. And then we're going to have four connect to eight 227. So we're improvising here and I believe that is it? Yes. So this is going to be the illustration of the unit cell. So we have one central atom and eight corner atoms. And the second part of the question asks is it possible to draw an electron structure showing the bond between the central atom and it's nearing nearest neighboring adam. So because the valence electrons can't be localized between electron pair bonds of any lithium atoms and its neighboring atom, we cannot draw an electron dot structure. So our answer here is we cannot draw an electron dot structure and it's not possible to draw an electron dot structure because the valence electrons cannot be localized between the electron pair bond between the central atom and its nearest neighboring atoms. So here we answered both parts of the question. We did an illustration of the unit cell and we answered the question about the electron dot structure. Okay, so from the answer choices given answer choice, C is going to show the correct illustration of the of the unit cell of the lithium metal and that is it for this problem. I hope this was helpful

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