Name: 【TED-Ed】What is the shape of a molecule? - George Zaidan and Charles Morton
Uploaded: 2014-08-12T14:19:49.000Z
Duration: 3 min 48 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

in the extremely dense nuclei of its atoms.

Now, let's assume that the only electrons

are the outermost ones from each participating atom.

that the electron clouds in between atoms,

Remember that nuclei are positively charged

or all of its electrons were bunched up together,

they would just repel each other and fly apart,

decades before he would eventually invent batteries,

Now, the chemical formula of methane is CH4.

is made up of one carbon and four hydrogen atoms,

but it doesn't tell us what's bonded to what

or how they atoms are arranged in 3D space.

that the carbon should be the central atom

and we draw each shared pair of electrons as a line.

but how would it look in three dimensions?

the most favorable configuration of atoms

would maximize the distance between bonds.

Now, depending on the different atoms involved,

you can actually get lots of different shapes.

Ammonia, or NH3, is shaped like a pyramid.

Carbon dioxide, or CO2, is a straight line.

Water, H2O, is bent like your elbow would be bent.

is expanding on our model of atoms and electrons

is that bonded atoms will arrange themselves

to maximize the attraction between opposite charges

and minimize the repulsion between like charges.

and we can actually get really cool chemistry

from the switches between those configurations,

even when the composition of that molecule,

that's to say the number and identity of its atoms,

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【TED-Ed】What is the shape of a molecule? - George Zaidan and Charles Morton

assume

negative

charge

molecule