Does anyone have any suggestions for building an octohedral model for chemistry?

Question

My daughter has to build an octohedral model for Chemistry class. She will use plastic, styrofoam and paint.

Has anyone every done this before and do you have any suggestions?

Answer 1

Build a model of Sulphur Hexafluoride (SF6). One sulphur atom with six fluorine atoms attached. This is an exception to the octet rule because Sulphur then has 12 valance electrons.

The molecular geometry is an octahederal and the electron domain gemometry is octahederal.

Answer 2

Role Playing Gamers use an 8 sided die = an octahedral shape.

Here is an image: http://www.entertainmentearth.com/prodinfo.asp?number=TYV06303

Basically an Octahedral shape is two pyramids stacked on top of each other. I would recommend that she creates two separate flat bottom pyramids of the same measurements and then glue the bottoms together. But, that isn't the right image of a molecule, tinker toys would create a better model.

An octahedral molecule is pictured on this site: http://www.chem.shef.ac.uk/level-4/cha96mch/tut_2.html

With a set of Tinker Toys you could create one. Use a center wheel shape and then use 8 sticks of the same size with a wheel shape on the tip of each end. The wheel shapes would then be labeled for each atom in the molecule. This is the best way to represent the molecule since you don't have atoms forming sides; they are more like spheres or wheels at points. Tinker Toys are cheap and easy to find and the resulting model would be super easy to create and fairly rugged. A piece of string tied to each outer wheel shape would show the boundaries, but you wouldn’t need that what you actually have is one molecule that holds eight others in a frame work.

If she simply HAS to use styrofoam then you can purchase styrofoam balls and use plastic sticks to join them together. The balls would be each atom of the molecule.