Which orbital hybridization is associated with a tetrahedral charge cloud arrangement ? A) #sp# B) #sp^3d^2# C) #sp^3# D) #sp^2#

1 Answer
May 3, 2015

The answer is C) #sp^3#.

Charge clouds, or reagions of electron density, can be bonds (single, double and triple bonds count as 1 region of electron density) or lone pairs.

A tetrahedral charge cloud arrangement thus corresponds to 4 regions of electron density that surround the central atom - this is known as the steric number.

The steric number it also used to determine orbital hybridization, i.e. it gives you the number of hybrid orbitals a central atom must have.

In this case, a steric number equal to 4 corresponds to 4 hybrid orbitals #-># one s-orbital and three p-orbitals #-># #sp^(3)# hybrid orbitals.

http://www.ntu.ac.uk/cels/molecular_geometry/hybridization/Sp3_hybridization/