well the title says it all. I’m studying for my chem exam and can’t pinpoint the difference of electron pair geometry and molecular structure. I know electron pair geometry is used for VSEPR theory, but what about the 2 are different?
tia 🙂
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Electron geometry considers lone pairs of electrons, radicals, and bonded electrons. Molecular starts with the electron geometry, but excludes non-bonded electrons
So take water’s oxygen for example. There are 4 “things” comming off the oxygen: 2 lone pairs and 2 single bonds. This is a tetrahedral geometry. Then for the molecular picture, take the electron geometry but exclude the non-bonded electrons. This gives a bent molecular geometry, since we started with tetrahedral and excluded the 2 lone pairs
Molecular structure differentiates between bonding pairs and lone pairs, while electron pair geometry does not.
For example, in water the oxygen has 2 covalent bonding pairs and 2 lone pairs, which corresponds to a “bent” molecular structure.
On the other hand, water has 4 electron pairs around it, so it has a tetrahedral electron pair geometry.
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