Question

Carbon has four valence electrons, and chlorine has seven valence electrons. If carbon covalently bonds with chorine, which of the following would represent the Lewis dot (electron dot) structure?

Answer 1

1. It is wrong because each chlorine atom should have 3 lone pairs
2. It is wrong because carbon only has four valence electrons
3. It is correct because each chlorine has 3 lone pairs and carbon has 4 electrons covalently bonded with chlorine
4. It is wrong because chlorine only has 7 valence electrons and therefore it cannot have 3 lone pairs and 2 bond pairs for each of C-Cl bonds

Answer 2

Answer: The correct answer is Image 3.

Step-by-step explanation:

Lewis dot structure is defined as the structure which represents the number of valence electrons around the atom. The electrons are represented as dots.

From the structure, we can easily determine the number of bonding and non-bonding electrons. Non-bonding electrons are considered as lone pair of electrons.

Carbon is the 6th element of the periodic table having electronic configuration of
`1s^22s^22p^2`

This element has 4 valence electrons.

Chlorine is the 17th element of the periodic table having electronic configuration of
`1s^22s^22p^63s^23p^5`

This element has 7 valence electrons.

The lewis dot structure for the compound
`CCl_4` is given below in the image attached.

Hence, the correct answer is Image 3.