Bonding: ionic, covalent and metallic - Intro

Salt shatters when you hit it. A copper wire bends instead. Wax softens in a warm room, while sand needs a furnace. None of that is luck. Each behaviour comes from how the particles inside are held together, and get this right and much of the next chapter predicts itself.

So here is what matters most in this chapter, and where to press play.

If you can't yet look at a substance and say how it is held together, start with The three types of strong bond, and spotting each structure. A common slip is giving the structure but never naming the bonding. If you know the vocabulary but the drawings feel shaky, go to Ionic bonding and dot-and-cross diagrams. A common slip is saying the electrons are shared and then transferred, in the same sentence. The ionic lattice is for anyone who can describe the ions, the charged particles, but struggles to describe the solid. A common slip is putting the forces between bonds, when they belong between oppositely charged ions. Covalent bonding and dot-and-cross for small molecules is a drawing skill, so it rewards a second go on another day. Courses differ on which small molecules they name, so check your own list. Metallic bonding is next. A common slip is describing a single atom when the question is about the structure of the metal. What our models of structure leave out is the one to save for when your exam is close. Fewer than half of students scored when asked for an advantage of one model, because they gave a disadvantage of the other. Every video in this chapter has a code, and you can search for any of them by name or by code. The quickest way is the scholafly.com website, which indexes every video in every subject.

Next in the chapter is The three types of strong bond, and spotting each structure. Hopefully that's next in your feed, but if not, search for ScholaFly C H oh four, oh one.

Every other video is on scholafly.com too, easy to search by video code or by keyword. Whatever you're revising, go there and have a look, or, watch the next video.