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| | CHM 1341 Lecture Notes 18 June 1996 |
 | | That VSEPR speaks of pairs and not individual electrons is because it, like Lewis, considers the electrons shared in bonds to be part of an atom's valence shell. |
 | | Carbon is the architect of so much interesting geometry because its four bonds, in methane say, array themselves to the corners of a perfect tetrahedron (all the hydrogens are equidistant from carbon and from one another), the most elementary of the Platonic solids. |
 | | When it bonds, as ammonia say, there will be a total of four electron pairs again surrounding the central bonding atom (N), 3 are bonding and one non-bonding. |
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