What Are the Key Ideas? The central ideas of this chapter are, first, that electrostatic
repulsions between electron pairs determine molecular shapes, and, second, that
chemical bonds can be discussed in terms of two quantum mechanical theories that
describe the distribution of electrons in molecules.
What Do You Need to Know Already? This chapter uses atomic orbitals and
electron configurations (Chapter 2). It also extends the concept of Lewis structures
introduced in Chapter 3. The discussion of polar molecules develops the material on
polar bonds described in Section 3.12.