[CKabes]

How is it that an atom can have a variety of oxidation states without causing the atom to have unbalanced charge? For Example, in the molecule SO₃, Sulfur bonds with three oxygen atoms through double bonds, which means that sulfur is sharing 12 electrons! How can this be since sulfur already has 6 valence electrons and only needs to share two electrons? and If sulfur did share 12 electrons, wouldn't that give SO₃ 4 electrons too many? Violating the octet rule??

does this have anything to do with HYBRIDIZATION?

[XGen]

What about hybridization do you know?

[CKabes]

I know that s and p orbitals combine to form sp, sp², or sp³ orbitals based on how many p orbitals combine and I don't know why they have to combine, but I understand why i was so boggled by sulfur trioxide in the fact that there was 12 valence electrons. SO₃ is a Hypervalent Molecule, like sulfur hexaflouride. It carries more than 8 valence elctrons. Ha, It's no wonder things were'nt making sence!

Can you tell me about Hypervalent Molecules? How can there be so many valence electrons??

[XGen]

Hypervalent molecules are a result of orbital hybridization. I see you have some knowledge of it; do you know what electron promotion is?

[thedy]

How is it that an atom can have a variety of oxidation states without causing the atom to have unbalanced charge?

This one,I dont understand.I m not sure,but how does oxidation state relates with charge?Oxidation state is hypothetical,isn it?Give me some another example,where oxidation states change charge.What charge in SO3 do you have?Zero,don t you?Or am I incorrect?
Why should be a charge in SO3 unbalanced?

[CKabes]

Regarding Hypervalent Molecules:

I was under the impression that hybridization simply changes the location of electrons on the same energly level, but hypervalent electrons would require the merging of two energy levels??

Also, I do not know what electron promotion is but would love to know! Please enlighten me!

[XGen]

Electron promotion is part of hybridization; an example is methane, CH₄.

The diagram for the electron configuration of the carbon of the methane is as follows (shamelessly taken from Wikipedia):



In methane, all of the C-H bonds are equivalent. However, as we can see in the picture, there are only two orbitals with unpaired electrons at the moment. What happens is an electron from the 2s shell is excited and comes into the 2p_z shell. This leaves unpaired electrons in the 2s, 2p_x, 2p_y, and 2p_z shells, allowing for four bonds.



However, this is not the end of it. If bonds were formed now, the bond containing the 2s orbital would have a different energy than the other three. This, shown through experimentation, is untrue. Therefore, the four bonding orbitals must be the same. Hence, the one 2s orbital and the three 2p orbitals hybridize to form four sp³ orbitals.

More information can be found on the Wikipedia page (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbital_hybridisation) for orbital hybridization.