Amino acids are the building blocks of proteins. The simplest amino acid is glycine (H2NCH2COOH). Draw a Lewis structure for glycine. (Hint: The central atoms in the skeletal structure are nitrogen and the two carbon atoms. Each oxygen atom is bonded directly to the right-most carbon atom.)

Video transcript

hey everyone weren't asked to draw a lewis dot structure for acetic acid and were given its formula right here. And we're told that there is a carbon carbon bond and the two oxygen's are both connected to the same carbon atom first. Let's go ahead and calculate the number of valence electrons we have. Starting with our carbon, we have two carbon and we're going to multiply this by four valence electrons since it's in our group for a This will get us a total of eight. Next we have more hydrogen and we're going to multiply this by one since hydrogen has one valence electron and this will get us to four. Lastly we have two oxygen's and we're going to multiply this by six since oxygen is in our group six a this will get us to a total of 12. When we add these three values up, we get 24 valence electrons in total drawing this out. We know that we have a carbon carbon bond and we also know that two of our oxygen are connected to one carbon. Since we have a terminal carbon, we're going to add our three hydrogen to that carbon. And we know that our other carbon will have a single bond oxygen and a double bond oxygen in order to complete its octet. And we also have one hydrogen connected to our oxygen To complete our lewis. we need to add our remaining valence electrons and we can do so by adding two lone pairs onto both oxygen's and this completes our 24 valence electrons. So I hope this made sense and let us know if you have any questions.