Answer to Question #200808 in Organic Chemistry for alchohols

Question

how do you draw alcohol structures

Answer 1

An alcohol can be pictured as having an sp3 hybridized tetrahedral oxygen atom with nonbonding pairs of electrons occupying two of the four sp3 hybrid orbitals. (See chemical bonding for a discussion of hybrid orbitals.) Alkyl groups are generally bulkier than hydrogen atoms, however, so the R―O―H bond angle in alcohols is generally larger than the 104.5° H―O―H bond angle in water. For example, the 108.9° bond angle in methanol shows the effect of the methyl group, which is larger than the hydrogen atom of water.