Why can an oxygen atom not form a triple bond?

Answer 1

oxygen has 6 valence electrons in its outer shell, can accept two more electrons in order to complete the shell, so will form two bonds.

Answer 2

Hydrogen, in it's base form has only 1 electron, but to be stable it want's a second to complete the electron shell. There is no way to form two covalent bonds while keeping only 2 electrons in its shell.

Oxygen has 6 electrons in its shell, and it wants 8, so it can form 1 double bond, or 2 single covalent bonds.

Answer 3

The ratio of two atoms of hydrogen to one atom of oxygen comes about because of a property known to chemists as valence, which is to say, every element tends to form only certain types of chemical reactions based on either gaining or losing a specific number of electrons (for reasons having to do with the specific structure of the electron shell of that particular element). So, hydrogen normally tends to give up one electron (hence has a valence of +1) and oxygen normally tends to gain two electrons (hence has a valence of -2). So if two hydrogen atoms each give up one electron, that makes two electrons which is exactly the number of electrons that the oxygen atom tends to acquire, so it works out perfectly. Note that hydrogen and oxygen form what is known as a covalent bond, meaning that they actually share the electrons (unlike an ionic bond in which one element actually does lose electrons and other gains electrons) but the electrons that they share spend more time with the oxygen than with the hydrogen; they are mostlythe oxygen's electrons.

Answer 4

An oxygen atom cannot form a triple bond because it does not have the necessary number of available valence electrons to form three covalent bonds, which would require a total of six electrons. Oxygen typically forms two covalent bonds, resulting in a double bond.

Answer 5

Oxygen only has a valence of 2, so it cannot form more than 2 bonds.

Answer 6

2