How To: Draw the Lewis structure for carbon dioxide & methanol

In this Education video tutorial you are going to learn how to draw the Lewis structure for carbon dioxide & methanol. Carbon dioxide is CO2. Oxygen atoms don't bond together. So, carbon atom has to be in the center. Oxygen has 6 valence electrons and carbon has 4. Hence, carbon wants to form 4 bonds and each oxygen atom wants to form 2 bonds. So, two each electrons of carbon will bond with 2 electrons of each oxygen atom. The Lewis structure for CO2 will be ( …. O=C=O….). The 4 dots within the brackets depicting the 4 free electrons of each oxygen atom. Now for Methanol, the formula is CH3OH. Since, hydrogen cannot be the central atom, carbon and oxygen have to be the central atoms. The Lewis structure for methanol will be 3 hydrogen atoms around carbon, carbon and oxygen connected to each other and one hydrogen atom connected to oxygen.