How many valence electrons are in carbon?
6.
The item’s valence electrons are chemically bonded to it, and so their number is determined by the number of atoms that need to be present for the substitute atom to be “complete.” In this case, carbon substitutes for six different elements (two hydrogen atoms, two oxygen atoms, a nitrogen atom and a sulfur atom). So each carbon will have six valence electrons. This answer does not take into account electron spin or orbital occupation numbers resulting from molecular geometry however.
Or maybe it’s eight. Hear me out…
Unlike bonds, electrons are not immutable and can be transferred through a process called “electron sharing.” Electrons that are shared by multiple atoms are used to determine how many valence electrons an atom has. For example, the number of valance electrons in Carbon is determined by how many pairs of (Valence) electrons it shares with other atoms. So because it shares four pairs with Oxygen and two sets with Hydrogen, Carbon is said to have six Valence Electrons. That’s six total Valence Electrons for Carbon–four from the Hydrogens and two from the Oxide which equals eight total Valence Electrons in all–the most allowed for any Atom!
I think five valence electrons.
Carbon has four outer shell electrons and one in the innermost shell. This lone electron, which is very tightly bound, cannot participate in a chemical reaction because carbon’s geometry doesn’t allow it to be close enough to another atom (it can’t bond). The number of available valence electrons therefore equals five. We often refer to this lone electron as “the fifth valence.”
Carbon has an atomic number of 6, so it has 6 valence electrons, or bonds.
Carbon has two electrons in the outermost layer. It also shares four electrons with its neighboring carbon atom and six neutrons in the nucleus. This leaves carbon with six protons (positive charge) and six negatively charged electrons. Together they balance out to form a neutral charge, or zero total electric charge.
Carbons have four electrons in their outermost shell. That’s it– they’re not radioactive, and there isn’t a weird deal about all the electrons moving around the nucleus at random every once in a while.
6
1s2, 2s2, 2p4. Niels Bohr was a scientist who thought that electrons have just two energy states–ground state and excited state–and he used this to create a model of the atom called “Bohr Model”. It said that electrons orbit at specific distance from the nucleus and sometimes move closer or farther away. Electrons can only radiate energy when they are in an excited state (higher than ground) but cannot absorb any energy from the atomic environment if they are in a ground state (lower than excited). Any excess kinetic energy of the moving electron would be lost as it falls back to its ground level. This is also known as classical mechanics because Bohrs’ model worked well to explain the physics of most atoms. However, it fails for heavier elements such as carbon because orbital pattern is too complicated and electrons keep changing their energy levels, which means that electrons don’t only drop from excited levels to ground state, but they can also fall back and forth between these two states during orbital transitions. Niels Bohr passed away in the year 1962 and was succeeded by a string theorist called Dr. Douglas Rayner Hartree, who applied quantum mechanics to Bohr’s model and discovered that electrons can have any number of energy levels within certain limits. He also found out that the orbital of electrons is not fixed, but it can be easily modified.
This means that all carbon atoms have six valence electrons because carbon has two-electron double-bond with oxygen. These electrons spend most of their time in the 2s orbital and they remain there because carbon is relatively inert element.
However, when carbon forms bonds with other atoms, these electrons are available to serve as bonding pairs because carbons’ valence electrons are shared with other atoms when covalent or ionic bonds are formed.
