Lone Pairs

[Nathan Mariano 2G]

How does the presence of lone pairs in an atom affect the deflection angle of an atom?

[Swetha Ampabathina1I]

The presence of lone pairs causes the repulsion between lone pairs and bond pairs to be greater than just the plain bond pairs which causes the deflection angle to be lower than the a bond pair.

[Harshita Talkad 4L]

The repulsion strength between lone pairs is greater than the repulsion between a lone pair and a bonding pair, and a lone pair and bonding pair have a greater repulsion than two bonding pairs. As repulsion increases, the size of the bond angle increases.

[Vy Lu 2B]

Although the repulsion of the bond pairs is greater than that of the repulsion of the lone pairs with one another, lone pairs still repel one another in the atom and hence affect the angle of the bond, possibly increasing the bond that it is near.

[Desiree1G]

I believe the shape/angle change has to do with electron repulsion. (This is important because it determines if something is polar or nonpolar.) I also read online that lone pairs occupy more space compared to bonding pairs of electrons, hence this results in greater repulsion between lone pairs of electrons.