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Course: Chemistry library > Unit 9
Lesson 4: Dot structures and molecular geometry- Drawing dot structures
- Drawing Lewis diagrams
- Worked example: Lewis diagram of formaldehyde (CH₂O)
- Worked example: Lewis diagram of the cyanide ion (CN⁻)
- Worked example: Lewis diagram of xenon difluoride (XeF₂)
- Exceptions to the octet rule
- Counting valence electrons
- Lewis diagrams
- Resonance
- Resonance and dot structures
- Formal charge
- Formal charge and dot structures
- Worked example: Using formal charges to evaluate nonequivalent resonance structures
- Resonance and formal charge
- VSEPR for 2 electron clouds
- VSEPR for 3 electron clouds
- More on the dot structure for sulfur dioxide
- VSEPR for 4 electron clouds
- VSEPR for 5 electron clouds (part 1)
- VSEPR for 5 electron clouds (part 2)
- VSEPR for 6 electron clouds
- Molecular polarity
- VSEPR
- 2015 AP Chemistry free response 2d and e
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More on the dot structure for sulfur dioxide
How to analyze different ways to draw the dot structure for sulfur dioxide.
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- In a formal test, like AP Chemistry, which would be considered correct?(25 votes)
- Is the structure planar ?(4 votes)
- The name of the sulfur dioxide structure is not "planar" but "bent"(12 votes)
- So both the Lewis structure for SO2 are valid, right?(3 votes)
- Yes, both lewis structures are valid, but the actual structure of SO₂ is neither of them.
Instead, it is a resonance hybrid of them both.(11 votes)
- Instead of what Mr. Jay said (), sulphur actually doesn't have any d orbitals. Why is it correct for it to have more than 8 electrons? 1:16(4 votes)
- It is true that sulfur does not have any electrons in d orbitals as a neutral, unbonded atom. However, anything in the third period and below has the potential to add electrons in d orbitals (I see that this is an old question, but I'm answering in case anyone else is wondering the same thing)(1 vote)
- Is there a general rule set to follow for detemining whether the element is an exception? How would we decide if the element is "happy" with the bonds assigined if the exception can be applied to all elements?(3 votes)
- Only elements in period 3 and down (4,5,6, etc) have d orbitals that they can fill with extra electrons.(4 votes)
- My question is why the resonance structures are right? I mean, they don't follow the formal charges, so why should it even be considered?(2 votes)
- Because formal charges aren’t always the best way to view things. Calculations show the bond order of each of the S-O bonds is 1.5, which lines up with the two resonance structures rather than the structure with two double bonds.(3 votes)
- What is the difference between shape and geometry of a molecule?(2 votes)
- There are two different geometries: electron pair geometry looks at all the arrangement of all the electron pairs and molecule geometry or shape just looks at the arrangement of the bonded atoms.(3 votes)
- If oxygen atom has 6 valence electrons, why we say it has 3 lone pairs and another electron to make a sigma bond with nitrogen atom.(2 votes)
- This video is about sulfur not nitrogen..
But remember when drawing a dot structure we don’t automatically assign each element its normal number of valence electrons, this is why. Some structures wouldn’t be possible to draw otherwise.(2 votes)
- why is the structure bent and not linear?(1 vote)
- Well with three electron groups around a central atom, the electron geometry is trigonal planar. But since one of the electron groups is a lone pair so actual geometry is bent.
Alternatively the physical meaning is because lone pairs on the central sulfur atom push the oxygens closer together and cause them to deviate from a 180° angle.
Hope that helps.(3 votes)
- How is it that period 3 atoms have a 3d orbital? Wouldn't the 4s orbital need to be filled first in order for this to happen?(1 vote)
- "Actually all Period 3 atoms do have d orbitals, however, they do not have any electrons in their orbital(they're empty) this is why they can hold electrons in their d orbitals.
You can actually make sense of this by looking at the periodic table and you can see how period 3 has empty d orbitals, where as period 4 starts to have 1 e- in their d orbital."-RBz
A similar question was asked earlier by Luis Cano lower in the questions section.(3 votes)
Video transcript
- [Voiceover] In the previous video, we looked at the dot structure for sulfur dioxide, and I drew out two resonance structures. So the resonance structure on the left, and the resonance structure on the right, and some people disagreed with me, and said that's not the dot structure for sulfur dioxide. The dot structure for sulfur dioxide has sulfur with a double bond to an oxygen on the left, and two lone pairs of electrons on that oxygen, and the sulfur with a double bond to an oxygen on the right, and two lone pairs of electrons on that oxygen. And then we have a lone pair of electrons on our sulfur. So the advantage to this dot structure is we don't have any formal charges, so the formal charge on sulfur is zero and the formal charge on both oxygens is zero, and so this is a valid dot structure, there's nothing wrong with this dot structure, it's fine. If we look at sulfur, we count up the electrons around sulfur, here's two, and four, six, eight, and then 10, so we have more than eight electrons around our sulfur, so sulfur has an expanded valence shell, so this is expanded,
we have more than eight electrons around it. And that's okay to do,
because of sulfur's position on the periodic table. Sulfur's in the third period, so we have some d orbitals, so we can have more than
eight electrons around sulfur so that's fine. So this should be a valid dot structure. If we go back up here, and we look at one of
our resonance structures, I'll take the one on the right, we do have formal charges, which usually, our goal is
to minimize formal charges. If we look at this sulfur right here and we count our electrons, we have two, four, six, and then two more for a total of eight. So we have an octet of electrons around sulfur. So for this resonance structure, we have an octet of electrons, but we have formal charges. Down here we have an
expanded valence shell, but we have zero formal charges. So which version of sulfur dioxide is the correct one? So in my opinion, they're both fine, because for the first version, when we draw two resonance structures, and we put in our brackets and everything, we are saying that the actual structure is a hybrid of our two
resonance structures, so sulfur dioxide doesn't look like this, it doesn't look like this, it's a hybrid of our resonance structures. So if we just think about bonds, and I draw in our bonds here, the bond of sulfur to oxygen, well, if we look on the left, let me use a different color here, we have a double bond between sulfur and oxygen, on the right, we have only a single bond here. So a hybrid of these
two resonance structures would say if that bond is in between a single bond and a double bond, so we would put a dotted
line here like that, and on the right, our bond between sulfur and oxygen, let's look on the right, let me use a different color here, I'll use green. Over here we have a single bond, and over here we have a double bond. So if we put in a dotted line, that bond is in between a single bond and a double bond, so like that. And experimentally,
both sulfur oxygen bonds have the same length, which
is what our hybrid shows us and our hybrid shows us the same length between our sulfur oxygen bonds. So in my opinion, it's fine to represent sulfur dioxide with these
two resonance structures, and I looked in several
general chemistry textbooks, and actually most of them give you this as the answer, so some of them give you this as the answer. And in my opinion, they're both correct. Sometimes you can only figure out the best way to do something like this, by using quantum calculations, and that's just way too
complicated for something that we're talking about. Both of them will tell you the shape of sulfur dioxide, both of them give you a bent geometry around your sulfur. And so, we might change this depending on what teacher you have. Some teachers are extremely strict about minimizing all formal charges, and so they might expect you to draw this version,
whereas other teachers are fine with drawing
resonance structures, and thinking about a resonance hybrid. So do whatever your
teacher wants you to do, but in my opinion, both
of these are correct, and it's not really worth
debating about too much.