(a) Describe what is meant by an electron-deficient molecule.

Video transcript

All right. Hi, everyone. So for this question, let's identify whether the following statement is true or false. Di boring B two H six is an electron deficient molecule. Option A says true and option B says false. So recall that the average covalent bond is generally referred to as two C dash two E because what that means is to center to electron, right? Ordinary covalent bonds involve two electrons being shared between two atoms. Hence the phrase two center two electron. No, when the question asks whether or not di boring is electron deficient. Recall that being electron deficient means that the molecule does not have enough electrons for all bonds present in the molecule to be to see, to eat. So let's consider the number of valence electrons actually present in B two H six, right? We have two different atoms. We have boron and we have hydrogen. Wait, recall it boron has three valence electrons and we haven't have two atoms of boron. So that's three multiplied by two to give me a total of six valence electrons from boron. Whereas hydrogen as one valent electron multiplied by six hydrogens gives me a total of six valent electrons. So when I add these quantities together, oops, I get a total of 12 valence electrons or die borate. So in order for all the bonds of di boring to be too center to electron, if I multiply the total number of valence electrons by two, then that means I should have a total of six bonds present in my molecule. However, we have to consider the actual structure of die boring, right? If I take my two atoms of boron and I give each of them two hydrogens, I would have to place two hydrogens in the center here. The remaining two I should say, right. So what that means is that there are actually eight bonds in the structure of di boring, even though we only have 12 valence electrons to distribute. Therefore, we don't actually have enough bonds or enough electrons to make sure that each bond in Dior is too center to electrons. And in fact, right, the dashed lines that I drew in my structure indicate bonds that are actually three center to electron because two electrons are being shared by three atoms in total. In this case, the two boons and the one hydrogen. So essentially, right, the statement proposed in the text of the question is true because Diora is in fact electron deficient. So my answer here is going to be option a and with that being said, thank you so very much for watching. And I hope we found this helpful.