Answer to Question #92398 in General Chemistry for Tj

Question

Which of the following molecules would you expect to be polar or non-polar? For each case, give reasons for your choice.
a) SF6
b) SO2
c) BrCl

Answer 1

a. SF6 molecule contains 6 single S-F bonds, which are polar (because the electronegativities for S and F are different) and the dipoles can be formed. The geometry for the molecule is octahedral with bond angle 90o. This molecule is symmetric. It means the these 6 dipoles will cancel each other and therefore the molecule will be non polar.

b. If we will look through SO2 molecule structure, we can see that it has bent structure. It can consists from two resonance structures in which sulfur atom contains two lone pairs on its atom. This molecule will contain net dipol moment because of two S - O bonds, which are polar.

c. BrCl is a diatomic molecule which consists from 2 atoms with different electronegativities. Based on the difference between the electronegativities of Br and Cl atoms we can say that this diatomic molecule BrCl will be polar with partial positive (Br) and partical negative (Cl) poles.