Why carbon is tetrahedral?

Answer 1

The carbon atom is called tetravalent because it forms 4 covalent bonds. A carbon atom has a total of six electrons occupying the first two shells, i.e., the K-shell has two electrons and the L-shell has four electrons. This distribution indicates that in the outermost shell there are one completely filled 's' orbital and two half-filled 'p' orbitals, showing carbon to be a divalent atom. But in actuality, carbon displays tetravalency in the combined state. Therefore, a carbon atom has four valence electrons. It could gain four electrons to form C4- anion or lose four electrons to form C4+ cation. Both these conditions would take carbon far away from achieving stability by the octect rule. To overcome this problem carbon undergoes bonding by sharing its valence electrons. This allows it to be covalently bonded to one, two, three or four carbon atoms or atoms of other elements or groups of atoms.

Answer 2

becoz carbon has a small size and is more electronegative than si and ge. it does not allow its electrons to participate in conducting electron.

dimond (carbon) is a covalent network with no free electron.

Answer 3

Tetra is 4 in Latin, and carbon often has 4 bonds to other atoms.

Answer 4

carbon is

tetravalent because of its ability to form compounds with four covent bond. These could be single(eg. CH4), double(eg. C2H4) or tripple(eg. C2H2).

Answer 5

Carbon is tetravalent because it has 4 valence electrons.

Answer 6

carbon has four electrons in its valence shell. hence by sharing four more electrons it can complete octet or the nearest noble gas configuration.