Tetravalence of Carbon: Shapes of Organic Compounds

Carbon’s unique ability to form four covalent bonds — its tetravalence — is the single most important reason why millions of organic compounds exist. But the real magic lies in how those four bonds arrange themselves in space. Because the four $sp^3$ hybrid orbitals point toward the corners of a tetrahedron, every carbon atom in a saturated compound has a specific three‑dimensional shape, not a flat one. This spatial geometry is the foundation for unders …