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chemical bonds
chemical bonds

Chemical Bonds

There are four types of chemicals bonds including ionic, covalent, metallic, and hydrogen bonds.

Chemical bonds are lasting attraction forces between atoms that enable the formation of chemical compounds. However, there are four types of chemicals bonds including ionic, covalent, metallic, and hydrogen bonds. An ionic bond form when a metal loses electrons to become a positively charged cation, while the nonmetal accepts those electrons to become a negatively charged anion. As a result, there will be an attraction between those positive and negative ions, so we can conclude that ionic bonds are commonly formed between a metal and a non-metal ion.

A covalent bond is formed as a result of atoms sharing their outer layer electrons called valence electrons, in order to become stable by having a noble gas electron configuration. The result of the formation of covalent bonds is a molecule. In metallic bonding, there are many detached electrons which act as glue giving the substance a definite structure. Those electrons do not belong to a particular nucleus and that is the reason they can move freely, making metals good conductors of heat and electricity. Finally, hydrogen bonds are weak attractions between two molecules resulting from an electrostatic attraction between a proton in one molecule and an electronegative atom in the other.

There are also different types of covalent bonds such as single, double, and triple bonds. The single bonds form when only one pair of electrons are shared between two atoms. The double covalent bonds form when two pairs of electrons are shared between the atoms involved. The triple covalent bonds form when three pairs of electrons are shared. An example of an ionic bond is the bond between magnesium and chlorine, magnesium is a metal and chlorine is a non-metal. Chloride ion has a charge of negative one and magnesium ion has a charge of positive two. This means that both elements together will form an ionic compound.

An example of hydrogen bonds is between hydrogen and oxygen because the electrostatic force causes polar molecules to be attracted to one another, it also attracts the positive and negative poles. Hydrogen bonds are a type of force that forms a special type of dipole-dipole attraction which occurs when a hydrogen atom is bonded to a strongly electronegative atom such as oxygen, nitrogen, or fluorine.

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The differences between Ionic compounds and molecular compounds is that molecular compounds are formed between two non-metals and ionic compounds are formed between non-metals and metals, molecular compounds can transform to solids, gases or any type of liquid and ionic compounds are basically always solid.

One similarity between ionic compounds and molecular compounds is that they both have multiple atoms to form a complex structure, and both involve the interaction between valence electrons.

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