How do you draw the sp3 orbital?

1 Answer
Dec 19, 2016

For convenience, most chemists usually draw it as an elongated teardrop.

Explanation:

It looks like this:

Teardrop
(Adapted from OChemPal)

The pointed end is attached to the nucleus and points away from it.

In fact, the same shape usually serves for #"sp"^3, "sp"^2#, and #"sp"# orbitals.

There are four equivalent #"sp"^3# orbitals, each pointing toward the corners of a tetrahedron.

The actual shape of each orbital is more like that of a stubby mushroom, as shown below.

2012books.lardbucket.org

Each lobe has a large lobe and a small one, and the big lobe is much fatter than a teardrop.

Thus, it would be more correct to draw the orbital like this:

www.ochempal.org

Even so, most chemists omit the small lobe and use a single teardrop shape unless they wish to draw attention to the small lobe.