The structure of Benzene

The structure of benzene is covered in detail on two pages in the organic bonding section of this site. It is important to understand the structure of benzene thoroughly to understand benzene and methylbenzene chemistry. Unless you have read these pages recently, you should spend some time on them now before you go any further on this page.

This diagram shows one of the molecular orbitals containing two of the delocalized electrons, which may be found anywhere within the two "doughnuts". The other molecular orbitals are almost never drawn.

• Benzene, C₆H₆, is a planar molecule containing a ring of six carbon atoms, each with a hydrogen atom attached.
• The six carbon atoms form a perfectly regular hexagon. All of the carbon-carbon bonds have exactly the same lengths - somewhere between single and double bonds.
• There are delocalized electrons above and below the plane of the ring.
• The presence of the delocalized electrons makes benzene particularly stable.
• Benzene resists addition reactions because those reactions would involve breaking the delocalization and losing that stability.
• Benzene is represented by this symbol, where the circle represents the delocalized electrons, and each corner of the hexagon has a carbon atom with a hydrogen attached.