water

[miriam_e]

Does anybody here know why the water molecule resembles Mickey Mouse? That is, why do the two hydrogen atoms stick onto the oxygen atom at 120° instead the apparently more obvious 180°. This has puzzled me since I was very young and I've never heard a good explanation of it. I've heard people say it is to do with the shapes of electron orbitals, but then usually dismissed as too complex to explain, which always sounds suspiciously like "I don't understand it myself so I won't reveal my ignorance to you". In my experience most concepts have fairly simple ideas at their heart. The trick is in finding the way to convey that.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

I know it has to do with overlapping bonding and anti-bonding molecular orbitals, and the electron energies of each shell and sub-shell - but darned if I can find an online resource (and I've been looking!) which explains it in plain English.

You can think of it as hybridized electron clouds and the distribution of energy around the molecule.

BEST RESOURCES FOUND:
http://www.lsbu.ac.uk/water/molecule.html
http://www.lsbu.ac.uk/water/h2oorb.html

Cheers, MFG

[miriam-e.livejournal.com]

Thanks Michael. It is going to take me a while to absorb those pages. They are a goldmine of info.