It is confusing and it is complicated to try to explain. The easiest way to do the simple ones is to determine the number of "regions of high electron density."
Then if there are two, linear as in HF. Three makes the molecule trigonal planar, four makes the molecule tetrahedral, five makes it trigonal bipyramidal, and six is octahedral. If you have some specific question, please post it and someone will try to address that specific one. In most freshman texts this one issue takes up about three long chapters and it gets more complicated as we try to differentiate between electronic shape and molecular shape.
hello
my teacher has really confused me.
can anyone tell me how you can figure out the shapes of molecules and what types of shapes there are???
i am really confused!
thankyou
xxxx
4 answers
thanks for your help drbob222 are you a doctor or something???????
Ph. D. in chemistry from Missouri University (a long time ago).
oooh that well cool...how long was your degree for then???
1 answer