CHEM 281 Chapter Notes - Chapter 1: Carbon Tetrachloride, Molecular Geometry, Covalent Bond

• School: Simon Fraser University
• Department: Chemistry
• Course: CHEM 281
• Professor: Nabyl Merbouh

Document Summary

Chapter 1 notes part 14: electronic structure and bonding. We saw that bond angles depend on the orbital used by carbon to form the bond. The greater the amount of s character in the orbital, the larger the bond angle. For example, sp3 carbons have bond angles of 109. 5 , sp2 carbons have bond angles of 120 , and sp carbons have bond angles of 180 . In section 1. 3, we saw that if a molecule has one covalent bond, then the dipole moment of the molecule is identical to the dipole moment of the bond. The dipole moment depends on the magnitude and direction of the individual bond dipoles. Because the direction of the bond dipoles must be taken into account, symmetrical molecules have no dipole moment. In carbon dioxide (co2), for example, the carbon is bonded to two oxygens; so it uses sp orbitals to form the two c-o s bonds.