tetrahedral or square planar?

[Lina Petrossian 1D]

How can we tell if a shape is tetrahedral or square planar?

[CateJensen3K]

I believe it would be square planar is there are lone pairs

[Sarah Zhao 4C]

Sometimes it can be either one and you may not know if the central atom is a transition metal with no roman numeral

[Nicolle Fernandez 1E]

Tetrahedral is 440 4 bombs while square planar is 651 meaning 4 bonds and 2 lone pair

[AvaGordon_4F]

I don't think we are responsible for that distinction, at least for this class! 14B tho...

[Josceline 3J]

One thing that we could also use to differentiate between them is that type of metals we are dealing with. For tetrahedral, it consists of all four complexes being non-transitional metals. Square planar in the other hand deals with 2nd and 3rd-row transitional metals.