Resonance Structure meaning

[madawy]

I remember Lavelle telling us that the amount of resonance structures correlates to come feature of the atom, but I forgot to write it down? Does anyone remember?

[Tanmay Singhal 1H]

i think it has something to do with formal charge

[Ashley Kao 1H]

When we went over resonance in lecture, Dr. Lavelle defined the term as the state when some Lewis structure have multiple bonds in different equivalent locations. The greater the amount of resonance structures, the more stable the Lewis structure is.

[Ashley Wang 4G]

I think the exactly quote you're looking for is that "resonance exists when you can draw multiple structures for a molecule with multiple bonds, wherein the arrangement of atoms are the same but the arrangements of electrons between the atoms are different." :) I hope this helped!

[Alison Trinh 1E]

Resonance is a blending of structures with the same atom arrangement but different electron arrangements.

[Abbey Brandt 1K]

I have always been confused by this as well. I know that there are often multiple ways to show an atom's structure, and that the best one has a formal charge of 0, but WHY? How do you know how many resonance structures to draw? Any and all insight is welcome.

[Lauren Sanchez 3D]

So is the resonance structure the average of all the possible lewis structures for a certain bond?