What is the correlation between electronegativity and the sharing of electrons?

For example in a C-O bond, the electronegativity difference is 1.2. does this mean that the Oxygen has 1.2 of the shared electrons and Carbon 0.8 (or some other numbers)? Is there a specific equation that can give us how the bonding electron pair is shared?





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> Is there a specific equation that can give us how the bonding electron pair is shared?
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No. The electronegativity scale is based on bond strength, not on partial charges. There are quantum-chemical methods to calculate the electron density in a molecule, and you can derive partial charges from that.



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> For example in a C-O bond, the electronegativity difference is 1.2. does this mean that the Oxygen has 1.2 of the shared electrons and Carbon 0.8 (or some other numbers)?
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No, the electronegativity difference does not allow you to make a quantitative statement like that. It is useful, however, to predict how a bond would hydrolyze. It also gives you an estimate about how polar a bond is.


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