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Ch.10 - Chemical Bonding I: The Lewis Model

Chapter 10, Problem 64b

Write the Lewis structure for each molecule or ion. b. OH-

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Hey everyone, we're asked to draw an appropriate lewis dot structure for the following an ion first. Let's go ahead and calculate the number of valence electrons we have. Starting with carbon, we have one of carbon and we're going to multiply this by four since it's in our group for a This will get us to four valence electrons. Next looking at our oxygen, we have three oxygen's and we're going to multiply this by six since it's in our group six a this will get us a total of 18 veils electrons. When we add these two values up we get 22 valence electrons. But since we have that negative two charge, this means that we have to add two valence electrons. So our total number of valence electrons comes up to drawing this out. We know that carbon is going to be our central atom and it will be surrounded by three oxygen's. We know that we have a -2 charge. So two of our oxygen's must have a formal charge of -1. So that means one of our oxygen's will be double bonded to our carbon and it will have two lone pairs And the other two are going to have three lone pairs and a -1 formal charge on each. And this gives us a total of a -2 charge. So our final louis structure comes up to this. So I hope this made sense. And let us know if you have any questions