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Mechanism of sulfur trioxide reaction with water to make sulfuric acid. This question touches on whether sulfur is hypervalent (whether it expands its octet when bonding). The first picture shows both sulfurs with an expanded octet. The problem is that in the top half of the below picture, we are supposed to end up with sulfuric acid, but we ...
Sulfur trioxide is an inorganic compound that is composed of a single sulfur and three oxygen atoms. The formula for sulfur trioxide is {eq}SO_3 {/eq}. Each oxygen atom is covalently double bonded ...
shows that sulfur trioxide is actually a resonance of several different structures, and should be more accurately expressed as several single bonds with a dashed line to show that the bond order is not actually two. This also solves the question as to why it is stable with apparently six bonds, as in reality it only has four bonds.
As a simplistic explanation, the above sources state that the lewis structure of SOX3 S O X 3 contains a 2 + + charge on the central sulfur and negative charges on two of the three bonded oxygen atoms. In that case, SOX3 S O X 3 contains one double bond and two single bonds, which is why people tend to list the overall bond-order as 1.33.
The Pauling method. correctly shows that all three bonds are equal without resorting to mesomery. incorrectly assumes a bond order of 2 2 rather than the actual 1.4 1.4. The charge-separation method. predicts a bond order of 1.33 1.33 which is much closer to 1.4 1.4. requires mesomery of three structures to explain the three equal bond lengths.
There are several factors which play a role in determining the bond length in a molecule. Here, in SOX3 S O X 3, we have no lone pairs on the sulfur atom whereas, in SOX2 S O X 2, the central atom has a pair of lone electrons. According to Bent's rule, the lone pairs tend to occupy the orbital with more s-character which in turn decreases the s ...
Like sulfur trioxide, carbon dioxide is an acid anhydride. The acid for sulfur trioxide is sulfuric acid, HX2SOX4 H X 2 S O X 4. The acid for carbon dioxide is carbonic acid, HX2COX3 H X 2 C O X 3. Dry carbonate salts like sodium carbonate can be made to release COX2 C O X 2 by heating to high temperatures.
6. Sulfur trioxide violates the octet rule. Upon drawing the Lewis dot structure for sulfur trioxide, we see that the central sulfur atom is bonded to three other oxygen atoms by double covalent bonds. Therefore, sulfur is in fact surrouded by 12 electrons and not 8 as per the octet rule. This is explained by the fact that the excited state of ...
4. Sulfur is bonded to three oxygens, twice each. The sulfur in the middle technically has a formal charge of zero, but the oxygens it is bonded to are extremely electronegative (they're electron hogs), and so the sulfur atom in the middle has a partial plus charge on it. Ergo, it will be willing to accept electrons to try to compensate.
Sulfur trioxide is planar with 120 degree O-S-O bond angles. If the molecule were unhybridized and we used the 3 orthogonal p-orbitals for our sigma bonds, then we would expect the O-S-O angle to be 90 degrees. Further, in the unhybridized scheme, there are not enough s orbitals to form 3 sigma bonds that are pure s.