Answer :
The electrons rearrange themselves again in a process called hybridisation. This reorganises the electrons into four identical hybrid orbitals called sp3hybrids (because they are made from one s orbital and three p orbitals). You should read "sp3" as "s p three" - not as "s p cubed".
sp3 hybrid orbitals look a bit like half a p orbital, and they arrange themselves in space so that they are as far apart as possible. You can picture the nucleus as being at the centre of a tetrahedron (a triangularly based pyramid) with the orbitals pointing to the corners. For clarity, the nucleus is drawn far larger than it really is.
What happens when the bonds are formed?Remember that hydrogen's electron is in a 1s orbital - a spherically symmetric region of space surrounding the nucleus where there is some fixed chance (say 95%) of finding the electron. When a covalent bond is formed, the atomic orbitals (the orbitals in the individual atoms) merge to produce a new molecular orbital which contains the electron pair which creates the bond.
sp3 hybrid orbitals look a bit like half a p orbital, and they arrange themselves in space so that they are as far apart as possible. You can picture the nucleus as being at the centre of a tetrahedron (a triangularly based pyramid) with the orbitals pointing to the corners. For clarity, the nucleus is drawn far larger than it really is.
What happens when the bonds are formed?Remember that hydrogen's electron is in a 1s orbital - a spherically symmetric region of space surrounding the nucleus where there is some fixed chance (say 95%) of finding the electron. When a covalent bond is formed, the atomic orbitals (the orbitals in the individual atoms) merge to produce a new molecular orbital which contains the electron pair which creates the bond.