CH3F is a polar molecule, even though the tetrahedral geometry
o...

Question

CH3F is a polar molecule, even though the tetrahedral geometry 
often leads to nonpolar molecules. Explain.

Accepted Answer

Hi everyone here, we have a question asking us to describe why chloroform is a polar compound. Despite having a tetrahedron geometry, which usually gives a non polar compound. So first we're going to draw the Lewis structure and to do that, we need to count our total number of anne's electrons present. We have carbon which has four valence electrons. We have three chlorine, So that equals seven times three because chlorine has seven valence electrons, so that equals 21. And then we have hydrogen. We only have one of them with one valence electron. So that gives us a total of 26 valence electrons. Now our central atom is going to be carbon and it's going to have a hydrogen And the three chlorine. So we've already used 2468 valence electrons. So now let's fill out tests on chlorine. So we have 10, 12, 14, 16, 18, 22, 24 26. Now let's draw our di pole arrows. So we have di pole moments going towards all of our chlorine. And we can see that it is in fact tetra he'd rel and normally tetra he'd roll cancels out because it has one atom surrounded by four of the same elements. In this case we have three of the same elements and then a hydrogen and normally where we have one element surrounded by four of the same elements. We have symmetry and that symmetry cancels out our di pole moment, but as we can see by our lewis structure, we don't have that symmetry because of our hydrogen. So we will not be a non polar compound. It will be a polar compound because the dipole moments do not cancel out. And that is our final answer. Thank you for watching. Bye.

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