- #1
etotheipi
This isn't a specific question, but more a case of trying to mitigate any potential confusion which might arise in the future. When drawing out curly arrows for mechanisms, and the like, I'm used to thinking about which electrons "belong" to certain atoms (in a book-keeping sense) in order to work out the changes in formal charge. If a nucleophile went to form a bond with another atom, I'd think of something along the lines of "the nucleophile transfers possession of one of its own electrons to the other atom", and this would result in the formal charge of the nucleophile increasing by one, etc.
I was wondering whether this sort of interpretation/internal thought process is common? Of course, we'd need to be slightly careful to clarify exactly what we mean by the electrons an atom "owns", since we might determine this by splitting all of the bonds evenly (i.e. formal charges) or by awarding the electrons to the more electronegative atom (i.e. oxidation numbers).
I was wondering whether this sort of interpretation/internal thought process is common? Of course, we'd need to be slightly careful to clarify exactly what we mean by the electrons an atom "owns", since we might determine this by splitting all of the bonds evenly (i.e. formal charges) or by awarding the electrons to the more electronegative atom (i.e. oxidation numbers).