Question

What is the purpose of a Lewis structure? What do the chemical symbol and lines in these structures represent?

Answer 1

Evidently, a Lewis structure depicts the structure of a molecule. The chemical symbols are the atoms, and the lines are the bonds, containing two bonding valence electrons.

In other words...

`"H"bb( : )"H"` can be represented by `"H"-"H"`

`:stackrel(..)"O"bb( : : )stackrel(..)"O":` can be represented by `:stackrel(..)"O"=stackrel(..)"O":`

`:"N"stackrel(bb(. .))( bb( : : ) )"N":` can be represented by `:"N"-="N":`

What are the names of these molecules?