Question #cd215
1 Answer
The carbonate ion, or
Three equivalent Lewis structures, also called resonance structures, can be drawn for the carbonate ion
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The molecule's Lewis structure (you can pick any of the three structures shown above, since they're all equivalent) has a total of 8 lone pairs of electrons and 8 bonding electrons.
As you can see, the central carbon atom has zero lone pairs of electrons and uses all its 4 valence electrons to form bonds with three oxygen atoms: 2 single bonds and 1 double bond.
The carbon atom obeys the octet rule because it has 8 electrons in its valence shell, 2 for each bond it has with the oxygen atoms.
