Describe the molecular geometry of:

(c) SiH₄

Video transcript

All right. Hi, everyone. So this question says to draw structure for Germain or Geh four. What is the molecular geometry of the structure? No, what I want to point out here is that this question can be solved in two different ways. We can either start from scratch starting with the number of valence electrons that we have to work with or we can recall one very important detail because in the the molecule given in this question, our center atom is Germania or Ge for short. Now, Germanium resides in group four a of the periodic table which happens to be the same group as carbon. So what that means is that Germanium has the same number of valent electrons as carbon and it has the same bond preference. So what that means is that Germain should have the same shape as methane or CH four, which is tetrahedral. So if we consider the structure of methane, which is tetrahedral, the structure of German should look very similar except for the fact that there's going to be Germanium in the center instead of carpet like so, but like I said, previously, we can also use the number of valence electrons to determine the same structure. Because germanium like carbon has a total of four valence electrons. Whereas hydrogen has one valence electron though we have four of them in total, right. So one multiplied by four gives me a total of eight valent electrons from hydrogen. Which means that in total, right, I have eight valence electrons to work with which can be distributed between the four bonds between germanium and each individual hydrogen. And recall also that in the case of this compound, I happen to have four electron domains, oops four electron domains in which all four of them or co in Ponce. And that if you recall corresponds to a tetrahedral geometry. So in this case, right, the structure of Geh four looks very similar to that of methane and it also exhibits tetrahedral geometry. Now, the bottom line is that you, you could reach the same conclusion either starting from the beginning with your valence electrons or by remembering the similarities between Germanium and carbon. So with that being said, thank you so very much for watching. And I hope you found this helpful.