lewis structures

     

Lewis structures, also calle Lewis-dot diagrams, are diagrams that show the bonding between atoms of a molecule, and the lone pairs of electrons that may exist in the molecule. A Lewis structure can be drawn for any covalently-bonded molecule, as well as coordination compounds. The Lewis structure was named after Gilbert N. Lewis, who introduced it in his 1916 article The Atom and the Molecule . They are similar to electron dot diagrams in that the valence electrons in lone pairs are represented as dots, but they also contain lines to represent shared pairs in a chemical bond (single, double, triple, etc.).