How does VSEPR determine molecular geometry?

Answer 1

The VSEPR model has enabled chemists and students to describe, explain, and predict more easily the stereochemistry of chemical elements and compounds. The Lewis structure, which was primarily used to convey the appearance of molecules in the past, proved to be inadequate because there existed many exceptions to this type of diagram. The Lewis structure displayed no information about the geometry of a molecule as it did not indicate how atoms were arranged in space. The VSEPR theory has relieved chemists and students of such limitations by describing the orientation of a molecule in relation to the Pauli principle. By determining this principle affected molecular geometry, Gillespie illustrated that the repulsion interactions of all electron pairs, both shared and unshared ones, in the valence of a molecule determine its shape. This is due to the fact that electron pairs adapt an arrangement that keeps them as far apart as possible; they repel one another.

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