This week was all about...more Lewis Structures and bonding. Lewis structures are diagrams that display valence electrons as dots to help people understand bonding and molecular geometry.
These diagrams are basically the basis of the whole unit, and they are how we express molecules on paper from now on (I assume?).
We started the week off by going over Formal Charges. These are a way to show the charge on parts of the molecule without having to put the charge around the whole molecule. It allows us to see the distribution of atomic charges in a molecule as well. Since opposite charges cancel each other out, we can simplify the diagrams as well.
(You can still bracket the entire molecule)
Then we did molecular geometry, with Valence Shell Electron Pair Repulsion Theory. As we learned earlier, unbonded electron pairs can affect molecular geometry, and the VSEPR model accounts for this. There are multiple shapes a molecule can take, and this is why. However, I'm still curious as to why this is actually useful in chemistry. Why does one need to know the shape of a molecule?
We have not gone over 7 and 8 coordinate geometry, I assume because it's not necessary (citation needed)
Up until now, I had a weak grasp of things, but soon after this, I get lost completely. This is a complicated unit, and I'm not grasping things as fast as I do in other classes for whatever reason. I'm going to need to study these things, so I don't ruin my grade on that test.
We finished the week with a glimpse into Polarity and Hybridization (with Sigma bonding). These are all lecture quizzes assigned near the end of the week, but hybridization was a mess of words that did not go well for me. My classmates seem to agree.
I have a theory on why people hated that lecture quiz so much: it didn't have the answers in it like it usually does and you actually have to apply the things you know.
These diagrams are basically the basis of the whole unit, and they are how we express molecules on paper from now on (I assume?).
We started the week off by going over Formal Charges. These are a way to show the charge on parts of the molecule without having to put the charge around the whole molecule. It allows us to see the distribution of atomic charges in a molecule as well. Since opposite charges cancel each other out, we can simplify the diagrams as well.
(You can still bracket the entire molecule)
Then we did molecular geometry, with Valence Shell Electron Pair Repulsion Theory. As we learned earlier, unbonded electron pairs can affect molecular geometry, and the VSEPR model accounts for this. There are multiple shapes a molecule can take, and this is why. However, I'm still curious as to why this is actually useful in chemistry. Why does one need to know the shape of a molecule?
We have not gone over 7 and 8 coordinate geometry, I assume because it's not necessary (citation needed)
Up until now, I had a weak grasp of things, but soon after this, I get lost completely. This is a complicated unit, and I'm not grasping things as fast as I do in other classes for whatever reason. I'm going to need to study these things, so I don't ruin my grade on that test.
We finished the week with a glimpse into Polarity and Hybridization (with Sigma bonding). These are all lecture quizzes assigned near the end of the week, but hybridization was a mess of words that did not go well for me. My classmates seem to agree.
I have a theory on why people hated that lecture quiz so much: it didn't have the answers in it like it usually does and you actually have to apply the things you know.
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