For Butanamine, can you explain the relative sizes of the HNC, NCH, CCC, HC1C2, and C3C4H angles.

Question

My teacher never showed us how to calculate the sizes of angles yet.

Answer 1

Hi Bobby B.,

Nobody asked you to calculate the angles, I hope! You would look them up, or at any rate find analogous information.

Hydrocarbon chains are pretty good about conforming to sp3 hybridization, thus everything except the HNC is 109.5^o . But the lone pair of electrons on the nitrogen squeezes the two amine hydrogens together, so also decreases the HNC to maybe 109^o . Not much of an effect. By comparison, in NH₃ , the HNH's are 107^o or so.

-- Cheers, --Mr. d.