Good question. In this case, carbon has less than a full octet (six electrons) and an empty orbital capable of accepting an electron pair.

Carbon can accept partial electron density from the electrons it shares with hydrogen, but that doesn’t negate the empty orbital.

When learning a new subject, there are always going to be these situations where you have to learn first-hand “which factor is more important” and the answer to that question is not necessarily something you can figure out from first principles, but instead has its answer in looking at experimental results.

Lol chemistry and physics always make me go in loops and never ending deep dives because literally everytime I understand something, there’s now more info added to confuse me again and so on. I have a love-hate relationship with these subjects haha.

Anyways, thank you so much for all this content!! It’s helping me make so much more sense of everything and I’m starting to be able to connect all the dots so really thank you so much!! (never delete this site pls :))

You say ” In a bond, the more electronegative element will have a greater share of the electrons, and a partial negative charge to reflect this greater electron density. The less electronegative element will have a partial positive charge to reflect the lack of electron density. ”

However, According to https://www.reed.edu/chemistry/ROCO/Potential/charge_distribution.html, it seems like for HO3+, either hydrogen and oxygen are positive. The only difference is that oxygen bears less positive charge compared with hydrogel because of the difference of electronegativity.

It does form hydrogen bonds, they are just fairly weak. Probably due to poorer orbital overlap between H and Cl than is found between H and F (3p vs 2p)

For example Eric Jacobsen’s research program involves using very weak interactions between hydrogen bonded catalysts (such as ureas) and chlorines. It has to use very non-coordinating solvents so that they don’t interfere with these weak interactions.

Late to this, but this is a typo. Will fix. Thank you!

In the last diagram I see you depict an interaction between NH4- and H20. I could not find any info about NH4 anion, was it a typo or it has other meaning? Please help me clarify this compound, thanks !

Not necessarily, because in the process of one species donating an electron pair to another, the acceptor molecule may expel a species bearing a lone pair of electrons. Acid base reactions are a simple example. In the reaction of NaOH with HCl, the hydroxyl group donates a pair of electrons to H, but Cl accepts a pair of electrons (from the H-Cl bond). Neither oxidation nor reduction has taken place. This is also true of substitution reactions.

I dunno Jordan. Look at the charge distribution map of H3O+ and look for the blue areas (positive charge). They’re all on hydrogen. http://www1.lsbu.ac.uk/water/hydrogen_ions.html

Nucleophiles *can* attack oxygen, if it’s attached to a decent leaving group. For instance, look at the migration step in hydroboration-oxidation. The key is that oxygen must have a low-lying sigma* orbital that can be attacked by a nucleophile. That’s not present here in H3O+ because a nucleophile would have to liberate H– , although that specific point is a bit beyond the topic at hand.