Concept:Water has a bent shape because the central oxygen atom carries two lone pairs that repel the bonding pairs.
Explanation:In a
H2O molecule, oxygen has six valence electrons. Two of these electrons form single bonds with two hydrogen atoms, while the remaining four electrons stay as two lone pairs on oxygen.
So around the oxygen atom, there are four electron pairs: two bond pairs and two lone pairs. These four pairs repel one another and for maximum separation arrange themselves in a tetrahedral manner.
However, lone-pair–lone-pair repulsion is stronger than bond-pair–bond-pair repulsion. This extra repulsion pushes the two
O−H bonds closer together, reducing the bond angle to about
104.5∘.
Because of this distortion, the molecule is not linear. Instead, it takes a bent or V-shaped geometry, which is classified as non-linear.
Answer:A. Non-linear