What is a net dipole?

Answer 1

Dipole moments occur when there is a separation of charge. This occurs due to an atoms' electronegativity - where one atom has the ability to attract electrons towards it (In other words, electrons wants to spend other time around it) giving it a negative charge and the other a positive charge.

Net dipole operates on the same idea - but it focuses on the direction and magnitude (vector) of the dipole moment. Focusing on the image above (a), carbon dioxide - oxygen being more electronegative than carbon pulls electrons towards it as demonstrated through the arrow. As the molecule is linear, both the bond dipoles cancel each other out (i.e. the vector addition of the dipoles equals zero) and the overall molecule has a zero net dipole moment.

However, for (b) as both vectors are pointing in the same direction, it has a net dipole charge.

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Answer 2

Ava Andrews

A net dipole refers to the overall dipole moment of a molecule, which results from the vector sum of all individual dipole moments within the molecule. It indicates the direction in which the electron density is shifted within the molecule, creating a partial positive and partial negative charge separation.

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Answer from HIX Tutor

When evaluating a one-sided limit, you need to be careful when a quantity is approaching zero since its sign is different depending on which way it is approaching zero from. Let us look at some examples.