Chemical Bonding: H₂O₂ Lewis Structure

Drawing the Lewis Structure for H₂O₂

Viewing Notes:

• For the Lewis Structure for H₂O₂ remember that hydrogens always go on the outside of a Lewis structure. That means that the two oxygens will go on the inside.
• Hydrogens only need two valence electrons to have a full outer shell.
• For the H₂O₂ Lewis structure you have 14 valence electrons available.

Transcript: This is Dr. B. Let's do the Lewis structure for H2O2: Hydrogen Peroxide, also called dihydrogen dioxide. On the periodic table, Hydrogen's in group 1 so it has 1 valence electron, but we have two of them, so we need to multiply by 2. Oxygen, group 6 or 16, we have two of those, so let's multiply that by 2 as well for a total of 14 valence electrons. Let's draw it. We'll put the H's on the outside, they always go on the outside. So O, O, then an H and an H here.

Let's put some valence electrons here. First, we'll form the chemical bonds: 2, 4, 6 valence eletrons. Hydrogen only needs two valence electrons for a full outer shell, so it's good. Now we'll put electrons on the inner atoms. So we have 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14 valence electrons. We've used all our valence electrons. You can see that each Oxygen has 8 valence electrons, so it has its octet satisfied. The Hydrogens are good. That's the Lewis dot structure for H2O2. We can draw it also as a structural formula, and that would look like this right here.

That's it: Lewis structure, H2O2. This is Dr. B., thanks for watching.