Some theories of aging suggest that free radicals cause certain diseases and perhaps aging in general. As you know from the Lewis model, such molecules are not chemically stable and will quickly react with other molecules. According to certain theories, free radicals may attack molecules within the cell, such as DNA, changing them and causing cancer or other diseases. Free radicals may also attack molecules on the surfaces of cells, making them appear foreign to the body's immune system. The immune system then attacks the cells and destroys them, weakening the body. Draw Lewis structures for each free radical implicated in this theory of aging. c. OH

Video transcript

Hello everyone today we are being given the following problem and asked to solve for it says free radicals are defined as chemical species that contain an odd number of electrons radicals are unstable species and react readily with other molecules. Were then tasked with drawing a lewis dot structure for the nitric oxide radical or N. O. So the first thing we want to do since there's only two atoms is draw them next to each other, bonded by one bond line and so one bond line represents two electrons. The next thing we're gonna do is you want to figure out how many electrons we are working with? So nitrogen is in is a group five element and therefore has five valence electrons. Oxygen on the other hand is a group six element and has six valence electrons. In total, We have 11 valence electrons to work with. And so we've already used two of them to draw this initial bond line. So now we are left with just nine valence electrons. The next thing we wanna do is you want to pay attention to whether or not the octet rule is being fulfilled and that each atom here has has its valence electron shell complete. So we mentioned earlier that nitrogen has five valence electrons and oxygen has six. And so therefore These two atoms must have five and 6 valence electrons, nitrogen and oxygen respectively around them. So the first thing you do is you want to complete our octet for oxygen. So you want to draw 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. This gives oxygen a negative charge. If we were to use the remaining three electrons around nitrogen we would have 123. This is incorrect as there are only four valence electrons on nitrogen and there are seven on oxygen. So we must re evaluate how we can ensure that we have an equal number of electrons as what we're given as well as completing the valence electron and the octet rule. And so we can do though, we can draw another line connecting this oxygen and nitrogen and then we can start to complete our outside electrons. So we've used two more electrons and now we're left with seven valence electrons. Nitrogen has five valence electrons. So we will draw 1, 2, 3 electrons around nitrogen. One electron from this bond line is going to be for nitrogen and the other bond line will also have an electron for nitrogen. For oxygen it has six. So if it has these two electrons with these bond lines, it only needs four more to reach six. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 valence electrons around the oxygen. And this is our complete structure. I hope this helped. And until next time