Boron Family: Borane - Video Tutorials & Practice Problems
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concept
Boranes
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Now, Boranes represent highly reactive covalent hydrides composed of only boron and hydrogen atoms. We're gonna say the simplest form is diborane. In it it's just 2 boranes connected by hydrogen bridges. Now, what's a hydrogen bridge or bridging hydrogens? These are hydrogen atoms that unite molecules by forming 2 polarized covalent bonds. So here we have borane as BH 3. Diborane, we have basically a hydrogen from each borane bridging together to these polarized bonds, one borane to another borane. So we typically do not find borane, we find diborane when we're looking for our molecule. Now these are rare and in-depth discussions is beyond the scope of this course, because at this point, we've always told ourselves that hydrogen can only make one bond. Well, that's not true. When you get to higher levels of chemistry, you'll see that there are bridging hydrogens that can form kind of like 2 bonds. It's a little bit more complex than that, but don't worry, you don't have to go over it in gen chem. Just realize that this is gonna be one instance where you see 2 bonds connecting to a hydrogen atom. This is very rare, it is not a usual thing.
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example
Boron Family: Borane Example
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Now based on the structure of the diborane molecule, determine the hybridization of the boron atoms. So remember, we have boron here, and it's connected to hydrogens, and these hydrogens are connected to another one. If we just focus on one of the boron atoms, let's focus on this one, how many groups or elements is it connected to? It's connected to 1, 2, 3, 4 groups. Remember, if you're connected to 4 groups, meaning surrounding elements or lone pairs, then you are s p 3 hybridized. That would mean that option c is our correct answer. Right? So in this case our hybridization for each boron atom is s p 3.
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Problem
Problem
The formation of diborane from its elemental components is given below:
Determine the enthalpy value for the formation of diborane when given the enthalpy values for the following partial reactions: