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Re: complex ammonia
- To: Aquatic-Plants at actwin_com
- Subject: Re: complex ammonia
- From: Paul Sears <psears at nrn1_NRCan.gc.ca>
- Date: Tue, 26 Nov 2002 16:13:11 -0500 (EST)
- In-reply-to: <200211261001.gAQA13Ka007478 at otter_actwin.com> from "Aquatic Plants Digest" at Nov 26, 2002 05:01:03 AM
> From: "Adam Shaw" <adams1 at comcen_com.au>
> Subject: Re: Complex Ammonia
>
> Regarding complex ammonia, Paul said:
> >Ammonia can certainly be complexed, but I don't see how ammonium (NH4+)
> >can be complexed any further than it is - the H+ is complexing the
> >ammonia, and it has no further way of hanging on to anything else.
>
> Well N can form more than 4 bonds - as you may know, complex structures
> form from coordinate covalent bonding and actually it is not uncommon to
> see it forming five bonds.
I'll have to disagree with that. One may see structures _drawn_
that show five (HNO3, for instance), but in fact there are only four
available orbitals (the 2s and 3 2p's), so one can only get four real
bonds, and certainly the N would be very hard put to bond to five other
atoms - no usable orbitals.
HNO3 is better written as H-O-N+=0
|
O-
There is a + on the N and a - on an O. The nitrogen has its maximum
four bonds. When it forms four, one of those is what is sometimes called
"co-ordinate covalent", in that both electrons in it come from the nitrogen,
instead of one from each atom in the bond.
I would be very interested to hear of an example with five.
--
Paul Sears Ottawa, Canada