Predict the shape and polarity of each of the following molecules, which have polar covalent bonds:
a. A central atom with three identical bonded atoms and one lone pair.

Question

Predict the shape and polarity of each of the following molecules, which have polar covalent bonds:

a. A central atom with three identical bonded atoms and one lone pair.

Accepted Answer

Welcome back, everyone. We need to determine the shape and polarity of the molecule described a molecule has its central atoms singly bonded to four identical atoms using polar covalent bonds. Let's begin by recalling that polar covalent bonds are described as bonds between two nonmetal atoms where one of the atoms is going to have, we say one of the atoms being X has a higher electron negativity than our second atom, which will say is Y now we're going to need to have a central atom designated as either X or Y will make our central atom our least electron negative atom. So we'll say it's Y and we want to have this central atom surrounded by four identical atoms. So our four identical atoms would be our atoms of X which are bonded to our central atom Y covalent with single bonds. So we're gonna draw in those four covalent bonds between Y and our four XS and note that because our central atom or sorry, our central atom Y has a lower electron negativity. Then our terminal atoms X, we're going to recognize that our Y will have a slightly positive charge and our X atoms have a slightly negative charge since they are more electron negative. And this is what creates the dipoles in our structure of our molecule. However, note that we have symmetry, I, we are going to observe that this symmetry is due to the following molecular shape as well where we're going to determine our electron geometry and our molecular geometry to understand this. So to determine our electron geometry, we want to count our electron groups and recall that electron groups can include bonding electrons or bonded atoms and non bonding electrons being lone pairs. So in this case, we have no lone pairs because we have four single bonds to our identical atoms. X. So we would have a total of four bonding electrons, we have zero lone pairs. So we have four electron groups for our electron geometry. Four electron groups corresponds to a tetrahedral electron geometry. Next, we need to determine our molecular geometry, which is going to be based on how our potential presence of nonbinding electrons influence the shape of our molecule. So in this case, we have, as we stated, zero non bonding electrons. So we have zero alone pairs. And therefore our molecular geometry is going to also remain tetrahedral. And thus, we would have the following corresponding shape which appears as our central atom Y still in the center where we have above Y A bond to our atom X and then below Y three bonds to X. And this is where we would observe our symmetry between our X atoms in the tetrahedral shape. And therefore our any dipoles will cancel. And we have a nonpolar molecule and this describes our polarity nonpolar. So this would be one of our answers. And we also were able to determine the shape of our structure via its molecular geometry as tetrahedral again, because we had the presence of zero non-binding electron groups around our central atom since it was singly bonded to our four atoms of X resulting in a tetrahedral shape. So these are our final answers, tetrahedral and nonpolar. I hope this made sense and let us know if you have any questions.

Predict the shape and polarity of each of the following molecules, which have polar covalent bonds:
a. A central atom with three identical bonded atoms and one lone pair.

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Predict the shape and polarity of each of the following molecules, which have polar covalent bonds:a. A central atom with three identical bonded atoms and one lone pair.

Verified video answer for a similar problem:

Key Concepts

Molecular Geometry

Polarity of Molecules

VSEPR Theory

Predict the shape and polarity of each of the following molecules, which have polar covalent bonds:
a. A central atom with three identical bonded atoms and one lone pair.