Question

Can someone check my lewis resonance structures? What are the 3 resonce CNO- least to most important?

http://oi61.tinypic.com/rw2hd5.jpg

Answer 1

Hi again!

Resonance structures are going to have all atoms in the same configuration. What changes is the number of bonds between them based on the possible electron configurations you have. Carbon is going to be your central atom because it can form four bonds, so all resonance structures of CNO- (cyanate, more commonly OCN-) will have the atoms in this order: O-C-N.

Now you need to come up with the number of bonds between each for your resonance structures!

Answer 2

http://oi60.tinypic.com/jjs7xx.jpg

Answer 3

@matt101

Answer 4

Looks good now!

Answer 5

Did I get the positive and negative charges in the right spots? It's still counting it wrong.

Answer 6

What you've done is right. The only thing I can think of is maybe we really are talking about CNO- here, as in C-N-O, as opposed to OCN- or O-C-N.

If you come up with three resonance structures for C-N-O, maybe that will be accepted instead.

Answer 7

I thought that too why I put the N in the middle despite knowing carbon goes in the middle.

Answer 8

Yeah but then you need to make sure the atoms are arranged in the same way for all your resonance structures. You had the atoms in different orders in your original post. Give the C-N-O structures a shot and I'll have a look once you're done.

Answer 9

Alright

Answer 10

http://oi57.tinypic.com/o931gi.jpg

Answer 11

@matt101

Answer 12

http://oi58.tinypic.com/v7gltl.jpg This one is for a NCS- resonance.

Answer 13

Ok I've had a look. I agree with your most important resonance structure. Your least likely resonance structure has 5 formal charges and so isn't really likely to occur much at all - I don't think it should be included here. I think your middle structure might make more sense as the least important resonance structure, because it has 3 charges, two of which are on the C. Your new middle structure should maybe look like this: C=N-O, with a -1 charge on the O (with 3 valence pairs), no charge on the N (and 1 valence pair), and no charge on the C (with 1 valence pair).

Answer 14

Can you draw those so I can see them better, please?

Answer 15

http://oi58.tinypic.com/55mtqp.jpg This is another one.

Answer 16

What do you think of this one?

Answer 17

For the first question, I was talking about this as your middle resonance structure:


Although now that I look at it, I think it could even work as your most important structure since there's only one formal charge.

Answer 18

I checked it with http://chemwiki.ucdavis.edu/ @api/deki/files/28112/b8461925b8631574db7a41c2b7a2f0ac.jpg

Answer 19

Do you think they shouldn't look that way?

Answer 20

I mean the ClO3- looks right to me

Answer 21

For the ClO3- the charge can be on any of the 3 O atoms.

For the first question, I suppose it could be what they have there (not in that order though). I just didn't feel that having 5 formal charges was reasonable when there were intermediate options. In any case, give those a shot.

Answer 22

Alright. Thanks