Oxalate bidentate

[Dakota_Campbell_1C]

Why is Oxalate bidentate? It seems that all four of the oxygens are able to donate an electron pair I am confused by why it is considered bidentate.

[Hai-Lin Yeh 1J]

Oxalate is bidentate because there are 2 places that can bond to the metal, M. In oxalate, the formula is C2O4 and two of the oxygens will bind to the metal, which makes it bidentate, unlike monodentate, where only one atom will bond with the metal.
In the pictures below, M- metal, and you can see that in a monodentate, there is only one bonded to the metal whereas in C2O4, oxalate, there are 2 bonded to the metal, which makes it bidentate.

[Kassidy Tran 1E]

Due to the shape of oxalate, it can only bind in two places. Referring to the last image posted, its highly unlikely that the other two oxygens can bend to bind with the TM in the center.

[Kyither Min 2K]

It is called bidentate because the oxalate is able to bind to the metal twice with it's two oxygens that have electron pairs to spare.

[Joaquin Andrade]

It's shape only for the singly-bonded oxygen atoms to bond to a central atom or ion.