Chemical Bonding Examples

If your goal is to understand chemistry, then it is important that you know how chemical bonds are formed between the elements. Knowing this will help you understand:

how chemical names are determined
how chemical formulas are written and
how chemical reactions occur
Therefore you should take the time to understand the chemical bond.

So, what is a chemical bond?

It is an attraction between two atoms so strong that the atoms act as a unit and this attraction is result of a pair of electrons either being shared or transferred by the atoms. It is important to remember that every single bond involves two electrons; usually one from each atom.

What kind of bonds are there?

There are two basic types; ionic or covalent. The ionic bond is the attraction between a cation (+) and an anion (-). The covalent bond is formed by the sharing of electrons to create partial charges.

How does the ionic bond form?

It forms when one element transfers some of its electrons to another element. The atom losing the electrons develops a positive charge (cation) and the element receiving the electrons develops a negative charge (anion). Since opposites attract, the cation is now attracted to the anion and a bond is formed between them.

Example: Na+ + Cl- ---> NaCl
It usually forms between a metal and a nonmetal and is the strongest of the chemical bonds. The resulting substance from ionic bonding is an ionic compound.

How does the covalent bond form?

It forms when two atoms share a pair of electrons. The sharing of electrons creates a partial positive charge and a partial negative charge which then forms an attraction between the atoms. Because the charges are only partial it is not as strong as the ionic bond.

It is usually between a nonmetal and a nonmetal. The resulting substance from covalent bonding is a covalent compound.

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.