What kind of geometry does #H_2S# have?

1 Answer
Aug 14, 2016

It's bent like a water molecule, but with a much sharper bond angle at the sulfur atom than water at its oxygen atom.

Explanation:

Water has a bond angle ofabout 104°, but in hydrogen sulfide the angle is only about 92°. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_sulfide.

This implies that in hydrogen sulfide we have bonding almost entirely with #p# orbitals. The hybridization we see between the #s# and #p# orbitals on the oxygen in water is almost completely absent in #"H"_2"S"#.