Textbook 2B.21

[005778617]

Hi,

Can someone explain and draw the picture for this problem? It's from Outline 3, section 2B. Thanks.

Hypochlorous acid, HClO, is found in white blood cells, where it helps to destroy bacteria. Draw two Lewis structures with different atom arrangements for HClO and select the most likely structure by identifying the structure with formal charges closest to zero. Consider only structures with single bonds.

[MaiVyDang2I]

Hey there, for this question you can draw two Lewis structure of HClO. The first one with Cl being the central atom (H and O to two sides) and the second one with O being the central atom (H and Cl to two sides). Both structures only involve single bonds. Then you can calculate the formal charge for each atom of the two structures. It should turn out that all atoms in the structure with O being central have the formal charge =0 so it's more stable.

Hope this helps!

[Ivy Nguyen 3I]

Hi! Continuing with what the previous person said, I have attached an image of the two ways to draw HClO. Note that for the left image, there should be two lone pairs on Cl and three lone pairs on O. On the right image, there should be three lone pairs on Cl and two lone pairs on O. The right image follows octet for each element and none of the components have formal charges, making the total formal charge of the atom 0. While the left image's total formal charge is also 0, the components Cl and O both have individual formal charges that end up cancelling each other out and thus, that makes the atom more unstable than the right image.

[Aneesha_Nema_3C]

Just going on what the previous 2 people said, for the left image, each of the atoms would have the following formal charges:
H: 1 - (0 + 2/2) = 0
Cl: 7 - (4 + 4/2) = 1
O: 6 - (6 + 2/2) = -1

For the right image, each of the atoms would have the following formal charges:
H: 1 - (0 + 2/2) = 0
Cl: 7 - (6 + 2/2) = 0
O: 6 - (4 + 4/2) = 0

Basically, even though the overall charges for both molecule configurations come out to 0, the one on the right is more stable because every atom's individual formal charge is 0.