Molecular Geometry & Bonding
what the shape decides
Concept

Pauling scale — where it appears

An electronegativity scale built from bond energies, on the assumption that a polar bond is stronger than the mean of its homonuclear partners. It is the oldest scale and disagrees with the others about several ordinary bonds.

Named by 9 essays across 3 fields — each of them below, with the objects they name alongside it.

What the group settles. For each molecule, the point group found from its coordinates and the two properties that follow from the group alone. Neither column required knowing anything about the bonds.

The dipole is not a sum of bonds

Adding bond dipoles as vectors gets the easy cases right and rests on a quantity with several incompatible definitions. The symmetry argument is exact, needs no electronegativities, and says when the answer must be zero.

wrong · Dipole Four scales, four orderings. Each column ranks the elements by one electronegativity scale, most electronegative at the top, with a line joining each element across the columns. Every crossing is a pair of elements that two scales order differently.

Electronegativity is not one quantity

Four scales, four definitions, four sets of units, and a defence — "they correlate well" — that answers a question nobody asked. Two scales can correlate at 0.99 and still put hydrogen on the wrong side of carbon.

wrong · Electronegativity sp3 hybrids. The directions the hybrids point, with the angle between them computed from the coefficients rather than quoted. The set is an orthogonal transformation of the atomic orbitals, so it describes the same space in different coordinates.

Bent's rule, against the substituent series

More electronegative substituents get more p character, so the angle between them shrinks. The rule predicts a trend, the trend is observed, and the quantity it depends on turns out not to be one quantity.

shape · VSEPR The bond sum, the measurement, and what is left over. For each pyramid: the vector sum of three bond moments estimated from the electronegativity difference and the measured geometry, the measured dipole, and the difference between them. Positive is towards the lone pair. Ammonia's bonds point that way and nitrogen trifluoride's point the other, which is why the trifluoride's far more polar bonds give it a dipole six times smaller. The leftover is 0.58 D for ammonia and at least 1.48 D for the trifluoride, so it is not one lone pair's property.

The lone pair is not the missing term

Ammonia's dipole is 1.47 debye and nitrogen trifluoride's is 0.235, although the N–F bonds are far more polar than the N–H ones. The bond sums explain the reversal exactly and point in opposite directions — and the lone pair that is supposed to make up the difference has to be worth 0.58 debye in one molecule and at least 1.48 in the other.

shape · Dipole Bonds the scales disagree about. For each bond, which atom each scale calls the more electronegative. Every row is a bond whose polarity would be drawn in opposite directions depending on which of these four tables in common use was consulted: Pauling, Mulliken, Allred–Rochow, Allen.

A ranking is not a difference

Four electronegativity scales agree about order to a Spearman coefficient of 0.99 and disagree about size by a factor of sixty-two. Put each on its own range and the O–H bond is 39 per cent of the way across on three scales and 4.5 on the fourth.

wrong · Electronegativity Carbon is not one number. The charge equalisation puts on carbon in the four fluoromethanes, and on hydrogen in the three that have one. Carbon's runs from 0.07 to 0.31, and hydrogen's changes sign between methane and fluoromethane, so the same C–H bond is polarised one way in one molecule and the other way in the next. A table with one number for carbon is printing the value an iteration starts from.

The value that only exists in the bond

A difference in electronegativity moves charge, and moving charge closes the difference — until every atom in the molecule has the same chemical potential. Solving that gives one number per molecule and a charge per atom, and carbon's runs from +0.0692 in methane to +0.3074 in tetrafluoromethane. Hydrogen's changes sign between the first and the second, so the same C–H bond is polarised one way in one compound and the other way in the next.

bonding · Electronegativity Four unweighted rules against the answer the hardnesses give. Twelve molecules, each drawn with the exact equalised electronegativity as a filled mark and the four unweighted means of the free atoms' values as open ones. The geometric mean — Sanderson's rule — is the closest on average, at 0.0706 eV against the arithmetic mean's 0.1666, and it is the closest on only 4 of the twelve. Every rule below the arithmetic mean is constrained to sit below it, and 2 of the exact answers do not.

A mean that is low rather than right

Sanderson's rule takes the geometric mean of the atoms' electronegativities, and it works better than the plain average. Computed against the exact equalised answer for twelve molecules it is better by erring downwards — and two of the twelve have exact answers above the plain average, where no geometric mean can go at any parameter.

wrong · Electronegativity Four tables, one answer, and a reason it could not be otherwise. The intensity–motion correlation — infrared intensity against how far the atoms move — computed with charges from four published electronegativity tables. Every molecule gives the same number on all four, to machine precision, because each is made of two elements: its charges are one number times a fixed pattern, a change of table changes only that number, and a rank correlation does not notice a rescaling. The dipole moments beside them do notice, which is the check that the tables are genuinely different.

The table that could not have mattered

Charges taken from one of four electronegativity tables invite a worry, because the tables disagree with each other. They do disagree — hydrogen cyanide's dipole runs over a factor of eleven between them — and for the molecules in question the worry could not have applied, because a molecule of two elements has charges that are one number times a fixed pattern and a rank correlation does not notice a rescaling.

shape · Dipole Twelve hydrogen bonds, four tables. The bond dipole of hydrogen against each partner, in debye, on each of the four tables after all four are anchored to the same hydrogen–fluorine separation. Positive is hydrogen at the positive end. A bond whose marks straddle the axis is one the tables disagree about the direction of, and there are 3 of them.

Four tables and one molecule to disagree about

A molecule of two elements is provably safe from the choice of electronegativity table, and a series down a group should land where the tables do disagree. It does. All four agree that hydrogen iodide is the exception — and they disagree about what its dipole is by 1.245 debye, which is two and a half times the 0.448 that was measured.

shape · Dipole

Named alongside it

The objects these essays reach for when they reach for this one.

ElectronegativityPartial chargeMulliken scaleBond dipolePolarityDipole momentModel limitConventionRank correlationLone pairBent's ruleBond angle

All concepts