How atoms bond - George Zaidan and Charles Morton
View full lesson: http://ed.ted.com/lessons/how-atoms-bond-george-zaidan-and-charles-morton Atoms can (and do) bond constantly; it's how they form molecules. Sometimes, in an atomic tug-of-war,...
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Most atoms don't ride solo, instead they bond with other atoms. And bonds can form between atoms of the same element or atoms of different elements. You've probably imagined bonding as a tug of war. If one atom is really strong, it can pull one or more electrons off another atom. Then you end up with one negatively charged ion and one positively charged ion. And the attraction between these opposite charges is called an ionic bond. This is the kind of sharing where you just give away your toy to someone else and then never get it back. Table salt, sodium chloride, is held together by ionic bonds. Every atom of sodium gives up one electron to every atom of chlorine, ions are formed, and those ions arrange themselves in a 3D grid calle...
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Most atoms don't ride solo, instead they bond with other atoms. And bonds can form between atoms of the same element or atoms of different elements. You've probably imagined bonding as a tug of war. If one atom is really strong, it can pull one or more electrons off another atom. Then you end up with one negatively charged ion and one positively charged ion. And the attraction between these opposite charges is called an ionic bond. This is the kind of sharing where you just give away your toy to someone else and then never get it back. Table salt, sodium chloride, is held together by ionic bonds. Every atom of sodium gives up one electron to every atom of chlorine, ions are formed, and those ions arrange themselves in a 3D grid calle...
