Question

Why Oxygen has 2 lone pairs?

Answer 1

Lone pair of Oxygen:

1. An unshared pair or non-bonding pair is a pair of valence electrons that are not transferred with another atom in a covalent bond is known as lone pair.
2. Group 16 is made up of Oxygen atoms. It has an atomic number of eight.
3. ${\text{1s}}^2{\text{2s}}^2{\text{2p}}^4$ are the orbital representations.
4. It contains six valence shell electrons and hence, there are three valence electron pairs in an oxygen atom. We know that oxygen forms two bonds and hence two electrons get involved in making those two bonds.
5. So, two electron pairs are left which do not participate in bonding.

Hence, oxygen has two lone pairs.