Thread: Hybridization of Chlorine

Hi all,

I know this might have been answered in the pass, but seeing as Chlorine in perchlorate has no lone pairs of electrons would that mean that it does not have any hybrid orbitals? And as it has a tetrahedral electron cloud arrangement this would mean that it has a sp3 hybridization but when I go to draw this out, it still doesn't seem right? So can anyone clearly tell me whether it has hybrid orbitals and doesn't? I have seen many conflicting theories over this, any help would be greatly appreciated. ^_^

A wild thought, as atomic structure is often cited to explain a compounds reactive behavior in certain situations, why not turn it around?

Namely, record the behavior of perchlorates and, from that, surmise its 'effective' or most likely atomic structure, or possible permutations thereof, that are consistent with the experimental evidence.