ShmoopTube

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Here's your shmoop du jour, brought to you by Carbon Atoms. By far the easiest atoms to copy.

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What is the hybridization of the carbon atom in the Lewis structure?

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And here are your potential answers...

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OK, so the key to answering this question is to understand what hybridization is.

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You've probably heard of hybrid cars...or even dog hybrids, like a labradoodle.

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They're super energy-efficient.

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The concept of hybridization derives from mixing the

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originals of something into a new mix, or hybrid.

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In chemistry, hybridization refers to the mixing of atomic orbitals.

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Just as there's a path we can follow to define the orbit of a planet around the sun, there's

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also a path we can follow to define the way an electron orbits the nucleus of an atom...also

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called an atomic orbital.

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Hybridization in chemistry refers to the mixing of atomic orbitals into hybrid orbitals which

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allow electrons to form chemical bonds.

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In fact, if atoms didn't "hybridize", some of these chemical bonds couldn't form because

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they wouldn't have the right shape or structure.

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Here, hybridization allows the Carbon to single bond to two chlorine atoms and double bond

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to the single oxygen atom. Oooh... edgy.

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Now onto the REAL question. How do we figure out what the hybridization of the carbon atom is?

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When determining hybridization, we can just count the number of other atoms that the atom

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in question is connected to.

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Carbon is connected to two chlorine atoms, and one oxygen atom.

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It doesn't matter that carbon is double-bound to oxygen; it is still only bound to three atoms.

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Three atoms means three hybridized orbitals.

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But wait, our answer choices aren't just numbers... in chemistry notation, we can add the exponents

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in s and p to find the number of hybridized orbitals it represents.

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Looking at answer C, we have the exponent in s...1 plus the exponent in p... 2. 1 plus

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2 is... give us a second... oh, right. 3.

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So our answer is C.

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As in "carbonite."

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