Consider the following Lewis symbols for elements X and Y:
e. What would be the formula of a compound of X and sulfur?

Question

Consider the following Lewis symbols for elements X and Y:

Lewis dot symbols for elements X and Y, illustrating their valence electrons for ion formation analysis.

e. What would be the formula of a compound of X and sulfur?

Accepted Answer

Welcome back. Everyone shown below are the Lewis symbols of hypothetical elements X and Y write the formula of the compound that forms one Y which is a representative element and oxygen combined. Let's recall that a representative element are elements that are also known as main group elements. And they will have similar chemical properties and are found in groups one a through groups eight a on our periodic table. Now given below in our image, we have hypothetical element X and hypothetical element Y where we can visualize a Lewis dot symbol for Y with two lone electrons on opposite sides of our atom Y. And for our hypothetical element X, we have three sets of lone pairs of electrons around our atom X and then one single lone electron to the right of our atom. X. Let's recall that our Lewis dot symbol tells us our number of valence electrons for our atom. So since our hypothetical element Y has two lone electrons drawn in, we have a count of two valence electrons for Y. And for our hypothetical element X, since we have the three sets of lone pairs and then the one lone electron that would give us a total of seven valence electrons. Now going back to the number of valence electrons for our element. Y since it only has two valence electrons, we want to recall that our number of valence electrons will correlate to our group number on the periodic table. And since Y has two bounce electrons in its lewis dot symbol, we would therefore say that Y is a group and sorry, this should say group two A element and being a group two A element, we would say that Y is going to be a metal because we're called that group two A represents our alkali earth metal group. Now, according to the prompts, we're combining our representative element Y with oxygen. So we're going to recall that oxygen and use a different color. So oxygen on our periodic table, we would find in group six a on the periodic table. And therefore oxygen, we would recognize as a non metal and being in group six, a oxygen has six valence electrons. So we would draw a Lewis dot symbol where oxygen has three sets of lone pairs around itself. And actually, to be more accurate, we should singly draw in our electrons around oxygen first. So we would have 1234 lone electrons around oxygen and then pairing them up, we would have five and six. So actually, we would have two sets of lone pairs on oxygen and then two lone electrons in its les dot symbol for its six bounce electrons total. Now being that oxygen is a nonmetal and our hypothetical element Y is a metal. If we combine Y plus oxygen, we have the combination of a metal plus a nonmetal. And this is going to be an ionic compound. So we're going to recall that ionic compounds involve the transfer of electrons between our two atoms. So drawing our symbols closer together, we have our Y element with its two lone electrons in its les dot symbol and our oxygen with its two sets of lone pairs and its two lone electrons within its lewis dot symbol. And we can observe that if we have a transfer of electrons between these two atoms. Keeping in mind our octet rule, we should really want to show a transfer of electrons from our nonmetal Y. So we would remove those two electrons and place them to pair up with the first loan electron on oxygen and then the second loan electron on oxygen. So that now as a result, our y metal will have a two plus charge because we called that a positive charge corresponds to a caton, meaning a loss of electrons and we removed two electrons from Y to transfer to oxygen which now has a full octet And now corresponds to a -2 anion charge. Since recall that an anion to that number of charge will mean we gained that number of electrons and oxygen gained the two electrons from Y. And so as a result, we have the combination of Y two plus and R minus anion, which will therefore result in our ionic compounds being Y O. Because note that since we have an equal magnitude of charges, our charges of our ions will cancel, we have a plus two and a minus two, which again is equal in magnitude. So our charges cancel and we end up with our ionic compounds being Y O. And this would be our final answer as our chemical formula of the compound that forms when our representative element Y and oxygen combine capital Y O. I hope that this made sense and let us know if you have any questions.

Consider the following Lewis symbols for elements X and Y:

e. What would be the formula of a compound of X and sulfur?

Verified video answer for a similar problem:

Key Concepts

Lewis Symbols

Ionic Compounds

Chemical Formula