Examine the electron configuration of the carbon atom.?

Home Work????!!!!

(a) four electrons

(b) by yourself.

here is not a school

a) Carbon has four electrons that are available for bonding. Two are paired in the s shell and two are unpaired in the p schell. So only two electrons are unpaired before bonding. But it is a different story AFTER bonding.

b) Covalent bonds are formed if the difference of the electronegativity between the two atoms is about 1.7 or less. (Some sources have different values, such as 2.1.) Since carbon has an electronegativity of 2.5 and most elements that bond with it are within 1.7 points from that, most carbon bonds are covalent bonds.

I sort of doubt that carbon forms any ionic bonds even with Cesium which has an electronegativity of 0.7, although it might with carbon if the carbon is in a triple bond with another carbon atom, as the electronegativity of carbon actually increases with double and triple bonds..

You really need compounds that have two atoms with electronegativities near the opposite ends of the limits (0.7 to 4.0) to be non-covalent. For example Sodium is 0.9 and Chlorine is 3.0 and they form salt, which is clearly ionic.

I don't think there is any connection between the number of unpaired electrons (the two in the p shell) before bonding. But when bonds form it is a different story. Most carbon bonds are actually hybrid bonds with the s and the p electrons acting as though they were equally all unpaired. For example with CH4 the bonds are sp3 hybrid bonds which means the electrons act as though all four electrons were unpaired in the shape of a tetrahedron. The four hydrogens each contribute an electron to pair the four unpaired electrons up to form bonds.

a) four, you can count across the row and C is the fourth element in that row.

remember that atoms in the p block especially want 8 electrons to fill the octet (Octet Rule.)

b) Since it has four it needs to share 4 more electrons to get 8. A covalent bond is when atoms share electrons. So of course there's a connection, they wouldn't ask otherwise. Take Nitrogen for example, it has 5 valence so it needs 3 more. N usually forms 3 bonds. Fluorine has 7 so it usually only forms a single bond.

this involves something called hybridisation. in the ground state of carbon, its electronic configuration is 1s^2 2s^2 2p^2. thus there are 2 unpaired electrons in the 2p orbital which means that there should be 2 covalent bonds. however in carbon compounds such as methane it is observed that carbon forms 4 covalent bonds. to explain this hybridisation came into play which says that there is an excited state electronic configuration of carbon in which one of the paired 2s electrons moves into the 2p orbital to give the configuration as 1s^2 2s^1 2p^3. thus there are 4 unpaired electrons in the 2nd shell. now the one 2s and three 2p orbitals transform into 4 sp^3 orbitals of equivalent energy and are oriented tetrahedrally in space and have 4 unpaired electrons allowing them to form 4 covalent bonds with 4 other H atoms as in methane

you had problems with this?