Thinking+Flexibly

**Thinking Flexibly** During the layered curriculum, one of the required questions asked us to know how dative bonds worked and how they differ from normal covalent bonds. Although I knew that in a dative bond, one atom provides both electrons for the bond, the question asked to draw lewis dot diagram of the molecule carbonate.

At first, neither myself nor my peers was able to figure out just how to draw this molecule's lewis dot structure. We could not figure out how the atoms bonded together correctly. We did not know where in the world the two electrons came from and tried all sorts of methods of drawing them. Eventually, we asked Mrs. Knowles and she taught us a significantly different method of figuring out the lewis dot structures of polyatomic ions: instead of starting off with the atoms and trying to figure out how they bonded, she first counted the total number of electrons that should exist if they were all bonded. CO3 has four atoms, so if there are 8 in each outer shell, there are 24 electrons from the atoms. The charge of CO3 is 2-, therefore the total number of electrons of the ion should be 26. Mrs. Knowles instead drew the atoms out and knowing that there should be 26 electrons in all, drew in the bonds if they were necessary despite the method of drawing lewis dot diagrams that we were accustomed to in which all atoms have bonds that complete their shells.  From this, I realized that the way I and everyone else was thinking about the problem was not the only way to approach it. We were in this mental box that this was the only way the problem could be done and did not consider any other alternatives. Seeing Mrs. Knowles' method of figuring out lewis dot diagrams taught me how to do similar ones in the future without problem. Although it didn't make sense to me at first because I refused to accept it, it does now as I realized that I just did not consider this option of drawing lewis dog structures.