“Carbon prefers to share its valence electrons with other atoms of carbon or with atoms of other elements rather than gaining or losing the valence electrons in order to attain noble gas configuration.” Give reasons to justify this statement.
Generated by claude-sonnet-4-6 · 2026-06-15 06:51 · grounding rag
Model Answer
Carbon has atomic number 6, so it has 4 valence electrons. To achieve noble gas configuration, it would need to either gain 4 electrons (creating C⁴⁻, difficult due to large nuclear charge on one atom) or lose 4 electrons (creating C⁴⁺, requiring very high energy). Both are energetically unfavourable. Therefore, carbon prefers to share its 4 valence electrons, forming 4 strong covalent bonds with other carbon atoms or elements like H, O, N, Cl, etc.
Source: Chapter 4, Section 4.2 – Versatile Nature of Carbon
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Explanation
- Examiners expect two clear points: (1) gaining 4e⁻ is difficult, (2) losing 4e⁻ requires too much energy — so sharing is preferred.
- Mention that carbon has a valency of 4 and forms covalent bonds.
- You don't need to explain catenation here — the question is only about why carbon shares rather than gains/loses electrons.
- Keep it to 2 distinct reasons for full marks.