Cyclooctatetraene dianion, C₈H₈^2-, is an organic ion with the structure shown. Considering only the p bonds and not the s bonds, cyclooctatetraene dianion can be described by the following energy diagrams of its p molecular orbitals:

(a) What is the hybridization of the 8 carbon atoms?

Video transcript

Well every once in this video, we're given the structure here, this of a 10 member carbon ring with double bonds. So alternating pi bonds. So we're focusing here only on the pi bonds, not including the sigma bonds and the pi bond molecular orbital diagram can be described by using this energy diagram right here, over to the bottom. So this goes ahead to explain it. But the main question in this problem is to determine the hybridization of each carbon atom. So we're gonna take a look at our structure here. So, the structure for every carbon atom that we see, actually, let's just write this out. So every carbon atom which is denoted of course I see has three groups. Let's take one carbon into example. So let's just do this carbon right here in the middle, so it's attached to one hydrogen, one carbon here and a double bond carbon to there. So even though we have a double bond here, that doesn't matter because it's still connected to one atom. So we have two carbons and one hydrogen. So we have three electron groups are just three groups for simplification. So each carbon atom here has three groups, which means that the hybridization then will be S. P two. The reason why we do sp two for this is because one of the orbital is from the s orbital and then two of the p orbital's, so of course one plus two is equal to three and we have three groups begin this, a sp two hybridization. The final answer then for this question is just sp two