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Topic: Number of Valence Electrons in Phenyl Group?  (Read 12211 times)

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Offline GradStudent4

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Number of Valence Electrons in Phenyl Group?
« on: June 09, 2010, 10:16:02 PM »
This may be a very stupid question, but I recently read, "The number of available valence electrons from a phenyl group is 1." How is this determined? I understand how you can determine this for individual atoms, but not for a functional group. Thanks for any help.

Offline Schrödinger

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Re: Number of Valence Electrons in Phenyl Group?
« Reply #1 on: June 10, 2010, 02:32:28 AM »
The phenyl group, I presume, is a radical. i.e, one carbon has no hydrogen attached to it, just an odd electron.

The hybridization of that Carbon atom is sp2. 2 sp2 orbitals form C-C sigma bond, and one p-orbital is used for C-C pi bond. Now the odd electron lies in the 3rd sp2 hybridized orbital, which would have overlapped with the s-orbital of Hydrogen if the molecule were benzene.

So, we have just one valence electron.
Hope this helps
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Offline a student

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Re: Number of Valence Electrons in Phenyl Group?
« Reply #2 on: June 14, 2010, 10:15:26 AM »
This may be a very stupid question, but I recently read, "The number of available valence electrons from a phenyl group is 1." How is this determined? I understand how you can determine this for individual atoms, but not for a functional group. Thanks for any help.
I would be grateful of you tell me where did you read this ? ;D I haven't heard it before  :o

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