BOND POLARITY AND MOLECULAR GEOMETRY

LESSON 5

BOND POLARITY

a measure of how equally or unequally the electrons in any covalent bond are shared.

NONPOLAR COVALENT BOND

one in which the electrons are shared equally, as in Cl₂ and N₂.

POLAR COVALENT BOND

one of the atoms exerts a greater attraction for the bonding electrons than the other

DIPOLE

two electrical charges of equal magnitude but opposite sign are separated by a distance

DIPOLE MOMENT

quantitative measure of the magnitude of a dipole.

MOLECULAR SHAPES

Lewis structures, however, do not indicate the shapes of molecules; they simply show the number and types of bonds and drawn with the atoms all in the same plane.

BOND ANGLES

angles made by the lines joining the nuclei of the atoms in the molecule.

BOND LENGTH

distance between the center of two bonded atoms

VSEPR THEORY

stands for Valence Shell Electron Pair Repulsion Theory, based on the idea that electron domains are negatively charged and therefore repel one another.

ELECTRON DOMAIN

a region about a central atom in which an electron pair is concentrated. Each nonbonding pair, single bond, or multiple bond produces a single electron domain around the central atom in a molecule.

ELECTRON DOMAIN-GEOMETRY

arrangement of electron domains about the central atom of an AB_n molecule or ion.

MOLECULAR GEOMETRY

arrangement of only the atoms in a molecule or ion—any nonbonding pairs in the molecule are not part of the description of the molecular geometry