## 4.43 6th Edition

$sp, sp^{2}, sp^{3}, dsp^{3}, d^{2}sp^{3}$

Alma Carrera 3C
Posts: 33
Joined: Fri Apr 06, 2018 11:02 am

### 4.43 6th Edition

This question asks how the bond angle between two hybrid orbitals would change as the s-character of the hybrids is increased. What exactly does it mean by increasing the s-character?

Posts: 60
Joined: Fri Sep 28, 2018 12:19 am

### Re: 4.43 6th Edition

The s-character is the percentage of the "s" in the hybridization. For example sp3, its s-character is 25%. In sp2, the s-character is 33%. When it says the s-character is increasing, it means that the percentage of "s" in the hybridization is increasing.
As s-character increases, the bond angle also increases. As you can see if the percentage of "s" is increasing, the trend follows sp3d2<sp3d<sp3<sp2<sp. The vsepr model also accordingly is octahedral, trigonal bipyramidal, tetrahedral, trigonal planar. This also means the bond angles go from smaller to larger as you head toward linear which is why the bond angles increase as the s-character increases.