Category: chemistry
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The Octet Rule
The Octet Rule expresses the idea that atoms like to have eight electrons in their outermost shell, known as the valence shell. This provides something like an explanation for many chemical phenomena – for a start, the noble gases which make up the right-most column of the Periodic Table don’t usually bond with anything at…
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Recent Science Writing
I don’t always post everything I write here, so I thought I’d just share a link to some of my recent science writing. Most of these are things I wanted to make sure I understood well enough to explain them clearly to a class of 13 and 14 year olds. Ionic bonding Metallic bonding Rock…
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Ionic Bonding
What Ionic Bonding Is Ionic bonding is the type of chemical bonding that binds non-metals with metals, and occasionally other things*, forming ionic compounds. An ion is just an atom (or sometimes a molecule) with an overall electric charge – many atoms and molecules have exactly as many electrons as they have protons, so the charges cancel out; when that doesn’t hold true, we end up…