Question

A carbon atom contains a s-orbital and 3 p-orbitals in its valence shell. In methane, the s-orbital and 3 p-orbital waves interfere(hybridize) to form FOUR sp3 hybrid orbitals.
How can four sp3 hybrid orbitals be formed from only one s-orbital and 3 p-orbitals?

Answer 1

orbitals obey a kind of conservation law just like conservation of mass. if 4 orbitals are needed, 4 orbitals must be used: 1s and 3p orbitals

Answer 2

But still how does it form four sp3 orbitals? Is it that the s-orbital divides into four parts, and each part forms a sp3 orbital?

Answer 3

Orbitals aren't something we can see. They are just statistical probabilities of where the electron could be. Further more, carbon's electron configuration is \[1s2s ^{2}2p ^{2}\]so if we look at it differently\[{\uparrow \downarrow \over 1s } {\uparrow \downarrow \over 2s } {\uparrow \over 2p } {\uparrow \over 2p } {\over 2p } \] So for methane one arrow(electron) from the 2s will shift to the last unfilled 2p leaving four available places for a hydrogen to bond. You would then call each one of these orbitals a hybrid sp3 becuase you have one s and 3p's bonding equally to a hydrogen.

Answer 4

this is concept of hybridization =mixing of basic orbitals (s,p,d,f) so on obtain hybrid orbitals