Structures of the Different Allotropes of Carbon.

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Sagar Manilal

Chemistry 11b

05-Jan-2004

Structures of the Different Allotropes of Carbon

        Carbon is a very crucial element as it is there everywhere we see, it even is in our own bodies. Carbon is present in our everyday lives such as in the food and even in air which we use to survive on a regular basis. Diamonds are another form (allotrope) of carbon in is currently the strongest known substance to man. This element is in the 2nd period and 4th group of the periodic table and has a total of 6 electrons with valency of 4 electrons. These outer shell electrons allow us humans to understand its nature and so we know that is shows covalent properties and undergoes covalent bonding. This sort of bonding occurs when the electrons in the outer shell of the element bond with another element by a mean of sharing electrons where electrons are neither lost nor gained in this process. As they have four electrons in the outer shell, it has four covalent bonds as they will have a total of eight electrons with is the total number of electron this particular shell can hold. The covalent bonding in this atom is very special as it forms many diverse crystalline or molecular structures. These different molecular structures of carbon are known as allotropes. An allotrope is the existence of elements in two or more different forms. Carbon has three major allotropes, and they are; diamond, graphite and buckminsterfullerene (bucky ball). These three allotropes have the same chemical properties but show different hybridization properties, geometrical shapes, delocalization of electrons and structures are different in each of these allotropes.

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        Diamond is a very well known substance in the carbon family. In an element, the covalent bondings involved as well as the presence of lone pairs of electrons determine the geometrical shape of the molecule. The diamond has an octahedral shape but the carbon atoms bond in a tetrahedral form showing that all the electrons are used up in this sort of bonding and so it does not conduct heat or electricity and acts as an insulator. This is done by a hybridization known as the sp3 hybridization. The electronic configuration of a carbon atom is 1s2 2s2 2p2 showing that the ...

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