Question

What is the angle between the carbon-hydrogen bond and one of the carbon-fluorine bonds in the fluoroform (

Answer 1

Answer:

110.43 degrees

Explanation:

Fluoroform is CHF3. The molecule is expected to be tetrahedral  in shape.

Recall that any molecule with four electron domains and no lone pair on the central atom (AX4) is expected to be tetrahedral with a bond angle of 109.28 degrees.

This ideal bond angle of 109.28 degrees for tetrahedral molecules only obtains when all the atoms bonded to the central atom are the same. In the case of CHF3, the bond angles of the H-C-F bond(bond angle of 110.43 degrees) is different from that of the F-C-F bonds(bond angle of 108.50 degrees) because the bonding atoms (hydrogen and fluorine) have different electronegativities and all the bonds are not equivalent.