Chemical bond

A chemical bond is a type of attraction force which holds together different chemical species. Atoms bonded stay together unless the needed amount of energy is transferred to the bond.

The drawing on the left side, is supposed to show an example of one hydrogen nucleus that has a bond to another hydrogen nucleus. (No picture has been taken of a bond between two (hydrogen) atoms; There is no evidence of any expert having seen (with the expert's own eyes) a bond between two atoms.) Those two nuclei are inside the electron cloud (that is made of the electrons of both of these two hydrogen atoms). To show when two atoms have a covalent bonding, one can put a line - on a drawing - between the nucleus of the one atom, and the nucleus of the other atom.

In general, strong chemical bonding comes with the sharing or transfer of electrons between the participating atoms. The atoms in molecules, crystals, metals and diatomic gases are held together by chemical bonds.

There are two types of bonds; covalent and ionic. Covalent bonds form when atoms share electrons. Ionic bonding is the attraction between oppositely charged ions. Chemical bonds are negatively charged electrons that are pulling protons into each other.

Because atoms and molecules are three-dimensional, it is difficult to use a single method to indicate orbitals and bonds. In molecular formulas the chemical bonds between atoms are indicated in different ways depending on the type of discussion.

A common way chemists describe chemical bonds is through the number of electrons each atom has on itself. Each atom is drawn with the number of electrons as dots or lines to form a maximum of eight. If the electrons form a chemical bond then a line is drawn between the two electrons. The number of bonds developed increases the number of lines.^[1]

Bonds can be double bonds or triple bonds.

Triple bond


acetylene, H−C≡C−H	cyanogen, N≡C−C≡N	carbon monoxide, C≡O
Chemical compounds with triple bond

Use of Lewis structures to show what is connected through chemical bond(s)

Lewis structures showing chemical bonds between carbon C, hydrogen H, and oxygen O

Related pages

References

↑ Atkins, Peter; Loretta Jones 1997. Chemistry: molecules, matter and change. New York: W. H. Freeman, pp. 294–295. ISBN 0-7167-3107-X

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[1] Atkins, Peter; Loretta Jones 1997. Chemistry: molecules, matter and change. New York: W. H. Freeman, pp. 294–295. ISBN 0-7167-3107-X

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