What is the molar geometry of ChClO?

Answer 1

If you draw out the Lewis Structure you can see that CHClO has a central atom of C with a single bond to H, a single bond to Cl, and a double bond to O. Since C has 4 bonds it is happy with all of its 8 electrons and has no lone pair electrons; therefor there are only 3 forces off of C that we have to worry about. These 3 forces are going to want to push each other away as far as possible. While Cl is going to be stronger than H in pushing force the farthest possible is still going to be trigonal planar geometry, which is a flat 2D triangle, like what you would draw on paper when sketching the Lewis structure. The approximate bond angles in CHClO are therefor going to be 120o (360o/3 = 120o). However, for future reference, the approximate bond angles are only exact when all charge clouds are equivalent. For example, CHClO is trigonal planar with bond angles of approximately 120 degrees, but BCl3 is trigonal planar with bond angles of exactly 120 degrees. Molecules that contain a lone pair on the central atom show even more distortion in the bond angles.