Who introduced the electron pair bond?
Q. Who introduced the electron pair bond? - Published on 16 Jan 17a. Irving Langmuir
b. John Dalton
c. G.N. Lewis
d. Neil Bohr
ANSWER: G.N. Lewis
- In 1916, G. N. Lewis introduced the electron pair bond.
- In chemistry, an electron pair or a Lewis pair consists of two electrons that occupy the same orbital but have opposite spins.
- He proposed that two atoms may share from one to six electrons forming single, double or triple bonds.
- He introduced the cubical atom and six postulates to understand their chemical behaviour.
- That chemical bond decides the properties of molecules such as colour, reactivity, solubility, etc. all of which decide their applications.
- Besides, it decides the physical properties of matter.
- We can now design the bond at will and get desired properties from the material so produced.
- Atoms can be assembled the way we want, to get the shapes we need.
- Many of these capabilities have inputs from several branches of science, but the underlying reason is the understanding of the chemical bond itself.
- Lewis wrote about the electron shell model and proposed that atoms acquire a configuration containing eight electrons in the process of forming chemical bonds.
- He introduced a symbolism for the bond — A:B, where the colon implies the existence of an electron pair bond involving the sharing of two electrons between atoms A and B.
- He symbolised this as A: B and A :B implying polar bonds, where electrons are closer to A and B, respectively.
- He had, models for different types of bonds such as covalent and ionic — in the former, electrons are shared and in the latter, an electron from one atom is transferred completely to the other.
