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The difference between lone pairs and bonding pairs may also be used to rationalize deviations from idealized geometries. For example, the H 2 O molecule has four electron pairs in its valence shell: two lone pairs and two bond pairs. The four electron pairs are spread so as to point roughly towards the apices of a tetrahedron.
The seesaw geometry occurs when a molecule has a steric number of 5, with the central atom being bonded to 4 other atoms and 1 lone pair (AX 4 E 1 in AXE notation). An atom bonded to 5 other atoms (and no lone pairs) forms a trigonal bipyramid with two axial and three equatorial positions, but in the seesaw geometry one of the atoms is replaced ...
Lone pairs (shown as pairs of dots) in the Lewis structure of hydroxide. In science, a lone pair refers to a pair of valence electrons that are not shared with another atom in a covalent bond [1] and is sometimes called an unshared pair or non-bonding pair. Lone pairs are found in the outermost electron shell of atoms.
It enables prediction and explication of molecular geometries that are not necessarily satisfactorily or even correctly explained by semi-empirical theories such as Walsh diagrams, atomic state hybridization, valence shell electron pair repulsion (VSEPR), softness-hardness-based models, aromaticity and antiaromaticity, hyperconjugation, etc. [1]
In Lewis' bonding model, the electrons tend to pair up in bonds such that an atom has a total of four chemical bonds and lone pairs associated with it: thus, the atom can satisfy its octet. LDQ theory also acknowledges that the elements in the ‘first short period’ of the periodic table tend to attain an octet of electrons surrounding them.
According to the VSEPR model (Valence Shell Electron Pair Repulsion model), linear geometry occurs at central atoms with two bonded atoms and zero or three lone pairs (AX 2 or AX 2 E 3) in the AXE notation.
According to VSEPR theory, T-shaped geometry results when three ligands and two lone pairs of electrons are bonded to the central atom, written in AXE notation as AX 3 E 2. The T-shaped geometry is related to the trigonal bipyramidal molecular geometry for AX 5 molecules with three equatorial and two axial ligands.
This increased p character in those orbitals decreases the bond angle between them to less than the tetrahedral 109.5°. The same logic can be applied to ammonia (107.0° HNH bond angle, with three N(~sp 3.4 or 23% s) bonding orbitals and one N(~sp 2.1 or 32% s) lone pair), the other canonical example of this phenomenon.