How many bonds does each carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen atom form in maltose?

Question

I know carbon has 4 bonds, oxygen has 2 bonds and hydrogen has 1 bond, but that's why I'm confused. The chemical formula for maltose is C12H22O11, so if carbon has 4 bonds and there are 12 carbon atoms, then there should be a total of 48 bonds, correct? But it's not correct so that's what I'm confused about. Same goes for H and O bonds, I don't get it...

Answer 1

You may be confused because some carbon bonds and some Hydrogen bonds are the same so you can only count them once. Where did you come up with 48 bonds? As pointed out by Laura C, there should be a total of 46 bonds, but I’m not sure how she arrived at that since there are no pi bonds in the molecule.

Answer 2

The reason that it doesn't make sense is because the bonds take on a different geometry than you are probably thinking they take on.

There are 2 ring structures of carbons, 5 carbons with 1 oxygen in the ring of 6 atoms in the 2 main rings.

These rings are connected by 1 oxygen in-between them attached to 1 carbon on both of the rings.

And then each carbon (except for 2 special carbon atoms I'll discuss momentarily) will have an OH group bonded to them. I will attempt to attach an image below.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/10yVVVNXVucXwF_MHuBccPLeokWGhzMO_/view?usp=sharing

Anytime I had CH or OH or CH2, that means there are that many hydrogens bonded to that atom aside from the green bonds I was trying to highlight.

Counting it up makes a total of 46 bonds made, 2 less than you'd expect.

I hope this helps! Please message me in the comments if you have any questions, comments, or concerns!