Chemical Bonding: C₄H₁₀ Lewis Structure

Drawing the Lewis Structure for C₄H₁₀ (Butane)

Viewing Notes:

• With C₄H₁₀ there are only single bonds. Whenever you see a compound made of Carbon and Hydrogen that ends in -ane that means it will only have single bonds.
• Remember that Hydrogen (H) atoms always go on the outside of a Lewis Structure.
• Note that Hydrogen only needs two valence electrons to have a full outer shell.
• In the Lewis structure for C₄H₁₀ there are a total of 26 valence electrons.

This is the C4H10 Lewis structure: Butane. For Butane, we have a total of 26 valence electrons. Whenever we see the ending, "ane", we know that we're going to have Carbons and Hydrogens single bonded. That makes it a little bit easier to draw the C4H10 Lewis structure. We'll put four Carbons in a row and then we'll put Hydrogens around them. Because each Carbon needs to have four single bonds--each bond having two valence electrons, that'll give it an octet--we'll have three Hydrogens on the end Carbons and two on the center, like this. There are the three on the ends, and then we'll put two Hydrogens on the central Carbons. Next we'll place a single bond between each of the atoms to show that a pair of electrons is being shared.

So we've used all 26 valence electrons for the C4H10 Lewis structure, and we can see that each Carbon has four single bonds. Since each single bond has two valence electrons, that means that each Carbon has an octet. Each Hydrogen has a single bond, so it has two valence electrons. That means that it has a full outer shell as well. So we've used all the valence electrons that we had for C4H10 and everything has an octet.

So we're done with the Lewis structure for C4H10, Butane. This is Dr. B., and thanks for watching.