Today’s #STEMsigns are chemistry related! Learn the sign for electron, valence shell, ionic bond, and covalent bond.
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Transcript: Today’s #STEMsigns are electrons, valence shell, ionic bonds, and covalent bonds! This world wouldn’t be possible without chemical bonds that hold molecules together. At its core, atoms are interacting with other atoms that are connected by bonds. Atoms create these bonds to be at the most stable state. To keep things simple, we will focus on atoms that will give away, receive, or share their electrons to have a total of 8 electrons in their outer shell also known as valence shell. Today we will share two types of bonds…ionic and covalent bonds! Ionic bonds are formed when atoms give or receive electrons, like gifts. A perfect example is salt. NaCl. Sodium has 1 valence electron and chlorine has 7 valence electrons Chlorine has 7 electrons in their outer shell and this is not the most stable state, remember, 8 is the most stable configuration! The chlorine atom will want to gain 1 electron to make it stable. The total ratio of electrons and protons is what gives each element their charge. If the element has more electrons than protons, the charge becomes negative; If there are more protons, the charge becomes positive. This becomes Cl- and Na+. These opposite charges attract each other and form the ionic bond and make NaCl…salt! Covalent bonds are little bit different than ionic bonds as no element loses electrons. Instead, they share electrons. The valence shell cloud will overlap with other electron clouds. Because the electrons move so fast, they can effectively share it between two elements. A great example is water. H2O. Hydrogen has only 1 electron and oxygen has 6 electrons in its outer shell. Hydrogen is unique in that to be stable, it only needs 2 electrons. Hydrogen does not want to lose an electron and oxygen will not give an electron. They must share. Oxygen will share one electron, so hydrogen becomes stable with 2 electrons. The two hydrogen electrons will share with oxygen, causing oxygen to become stable with 8 electrons. When you think about ionic and covalent bonds, covalent bonds are more prevalent in living things.
