Why do lone pairs take up more space than bonds?

[welcometochillis]

Is it because bonds are more tightly held together than electrons traveling around the orbital?

[Eli Aminpour 2K]

protons are positively charged and attract electrons, but electrons are negatively charged and repulse other electrons. A lone pair causes an area of high electron density and causes distortions due to the electron-electron distortion. They don't take up more space, they just have a stronger negative charge.

[Christine Wastila 1H]

Just to add on, because lone pairs have a stronger negative charge than bonding pairs, they cause a higher degree of repulsion, which is why they appear to take up more space.

[Yeyang Zu 2J]

Because lone paris have the strongest repulsion force to each other.

[Navleen Bajwa 3A]

The lone pairs are localized around the central atom. The lone pairs occupy more space because there is greater repulsion with each other.

[Erik Khong 2E]

Lone pairs have a stronger repulsion than bonding pairs because bonding pairs are farther away from the central atom since it needs to be connected to the sharing atom. Meanwhile, lone pairs are closer to the nucleus as it doesn't need to be shared with any other atoms, so they will give off more repulsion.