42
Why unlikely? Ionic compounds of carbon have been known for ages. There are ionic carbides ($\ce{Al4C3}$, $\ce{CaC2}$, etc.), graphite intercalation compounds like $\ce{KC8}$, ionic derivatives of fullerenes and more.
Come to think of it, common $\ce{CaCO3}$ is certainly ionic and at the same time a compound of carbon, but this is most likely not what you ...
34
Crystals have inspired a great many chemists because they are fascinating for a good reason. Not only are they aesthetically pleasing, but they serve as an excellent subject to tour a variety of theoretical subjects important for understanding high-level chemistry.
Crystalline materials are made up of periodic structures. We’re only going to primarily focus ...
31
According to Pauling's famous The Nature of the Chemical Bond , 3rd edition, at page 73:
In the hydrogen molecule a quantum-mechanical treatment has shown that the two ionic structures $\ce{H+H-}$ and $\ce{H- H+}$ enter into resonance with the extreme covalent structure $\ce{H-H}$ only to a small extent, each ionic structure contributing only about 2 ...
26
This question reminds me of a germaphobic classmate I had back in Middle-school. He would always stay clear of public lavatories/urinals because he was under the impression that urinating at one would result in bacteria from the urinal climbing up the stream of urine and into his urethra...needless to say, he was a very lonely boy.
The situation you ...
20
No, the correct way of putting it is
$$\mathrm{Almost~all~of~the~\mathbf{inorganic}~nitrate~salts~are~soluble~in~water. }$$
The families of organic nitrate salts are typically nitrates of azoles and imidazoles. Some bright examples are (R) & (S)-miconazole nitrates, isoconazole nitrate and econazol nitrate. Econazol nitrate (Other names: Spectazole, EN) ...
18
Usually not. Boiling point rarely exceeds 4-5 thousands kelvin. A typical ionic bound energy is about 5 eV. 1 eV is roughly 11 thousands kelvin, so ions in low-temperature vapors are in molecules. When temperature becomes enough to break ionic molecules, it is enough to strip one-two electrons from atoms, so hight-temperature vapors will be plasma with ...
18
Quartz and diamond are stronger substances because their molecules form network covalent structures. These structures form a lattice-like structure, much the same as ionic compounds.
This molecular network is also the reason that diamond and quartz form a crystalline structures, just like you'd see in ionic substances such as NaCl. Some other structures you ...
18
Bonds can be completely covalent as in $\ce{Cl-Cl}$, $\ce{H-H}$, etc. In these cases the electron density is shared equally between the two atoms. Bonds can also be ionic as in $\ce{Na^{+} Cl^{-}}$ where much (~80%) of an electron has been transferred from the sodium atom to the chlorine atom. Between these two extreme cases exist a continuum of bonds that ...
18
What you call iron sulphide, in my opinion, is more appropriately referred to as or iron disulphide.
If one were to assign oxidation states to each atom, an appropriate description would be $\ce{Fe^2+}$ and $\ce{S_2^2−}$. This formalism recognizes that the sulfur atoms in pyrite occur in pairs with clear $\ce{S–S}$ bonds. These disulphide units can be ...
18
A "100% ionic" bond would be a bond whose bonding electron(s) were never in the vicinity of the cation, but rather always in unperturbed valence orbitals of the anion. That's not far from the truth in a paradigmatic ionic compound like $\ce{NaCl}$, but no matter how electronegative the anion is, the bonding electrons will still experience some attraction ...
17
The character of the bond is determined by the electronegativity of the atoms.
Speaking of bonds as purely ionic or covalent is not always correct - usually it is more correct to say that a bond has ionic or covalent characteristics.
So comparing the difference in electronegativities gives us the following:
$$\begin{array}{cc}\hline
\text{Difference in ...
17
Yes, this is a subtle thing.
Using the Pauling electronegativities, one would expect CsF to have the larger electronegativity difference (3.2). So in principal, it should be "more ionic."
Unfortunately, an ionic bond requires separating charge, so $\ce{Cs+F-}$. The problem is that $\ce{Cs+}$ is much larger than $\ce{K+}$ and so the dipole moment for a ...
17
As per DavePhD's answer, the contact angle of NaCl with water is zero, so we need another measure.
I think the word you are looking for is hygroscopic. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hygroscopy Substances which are so hygroscopic that they dissolve in the water they absorb from the atmosphere are said to be deliquescent, although the property of deliquesence ...
16
The scale for degree of being hydrophilic is contact angle.
Contact angle ranges from 0 to 180 degrees, 0 being the most hydrophilic and 180 being the most hydrophobic.
180 degrees means that a drop of water on the surface forms a sphere, which only contacts the solid surface at one tangential point.
0 degrees means that the water spreads in a thin, ...
16
The potassium chloride solutions in my lab are in transparent glass bottles, as was the potassium chloride solution in my inorganic students’ lab at the LMU in Munich. If I recall it correctly, the solid potassium chloride we had there was in a transparent bottle, too, but don’t quote me on that.
There should be nothing in potassium chloride that will react ...
16
The term you are looking for is formula unit, I think. Wikipedia doesn't really describe it super well, but just to give an example, you could write the sentence
$\pu{58.44 g}$ of $\ce{NaCl}$ contains $6.022 \times 10^{23}$ formula units of sodium chloride
and it would be pretty well understood.
See also: What is the difference between a Chemical ...
15
The current version of Nomenclature of Inorganic Chemistry – IUPAC Recommendations 2005 (Red Book) reads as follows:
(…)
The stoichiometric name of the compound is then formed by combining the name of the electropositive constituent, cited first, with that of the electronegative constituent, both suitably qualified by any necessary multiplicative ...
14
Electric charge is transferred by physically moving charged particles around. In the case of an electric current moving through a wire (for example), the electrons are moving.
In an ionic compound, the ions are locked in place. They can move around a little bit, but there is not much translational motion - the ions stay in their places on the crystal ...
14
There is also the classical case of the aromatic carbocations and carbanions; examples include tropylium bromide,
and sodium cyclopentadienide, which is used for preparing "sandwich compounds", among other uses.
14
On a sample of one selling site, amber bottles are cheaper than similar clear bottles, for some moderate to large quantities, at least today. KCl is fairly cheap so when selling the stuff in small quantity every penny saved counts towards profit. So: Economics could be the cause.
14
Understand that sodium chloride is not made up of sodium metal and chlorine gas but of sodium ions and chloride ions, held together by ionic interactions. Under these thermal conditions (liquefication), the compound will not decompose into its elements and therefore all reactions you suggested which include elemental chlorine or sodium cannot occur.
...
13
Bonds are usually used to describe how electrons are shared. "Partially ionic bonds" are polar covalent bonds. Which is not the same as saying that a compound has different types of bonds in the whole compound. I think that your teacher gave you a bad question and a bad answer. If the question had asked whether all the bonds in sodium nitrate are ionic, then ...
13
$\ce {MgO}$ ($\approx 3800$ $\pu{kJ mol^{-1}}$) has higher lattice energy than $\ce {LiF}$ ($\approx 1045$ $\pu{kJ mol^{-1}}$) mainly because of the greater charge on $\ce{Mg^2^{+}}$ ion and $\ce {O^{2-}}$ as lattice energy is directly proportional to the charges of the combing atoms.
Your reasoning isn't incorrect but remember that $\ce{Li}$ and $\ce{Mg}$...
13
Calcium hydroxide has solubility about 1.9 g/L. This is enough to create pH above 11, i.e. a strongly basic solution.
$\ce{CaCl2}$ solutions should be very slightly acidic if they were made from pure $\ce{CaCl2}$. This might not be the case. In industry calcium chloride is produces by reaction of calcium hydroxide with ammonium chloride, so industrial-grade ...
12
The answer relates to the strength of the interactions between the component units that make up a crystal or a solid.
The reason why anything is a solid at a given temperature is, crudely, that the interactions between the units that make up the solid (atoms, ions or molecules) are stronger than the amount of thermal energy available at that temperature.
...
12
Azulene has a 1.05 debye dipole moment,
A hydrocarbon as such bonded as an isolated cation-anion pair with no heteroatoms could happen in principle given sufficient steric hindrance. Penta-tert-butylcyclopentadienide or pentakis(2,4,6-tri-tert-butylphenyl)cyclopentadienide with like fully substituted cyclpropenium or tropylium might work.
Similar ...
12
An ionic bond could maybe be described as an inter-ionic force. All electron interactions are most accurately described by wavefunctions and quantum mechanics, but in practice we use successively more detailed approximations for convenience, stopping at the lowest level of detail that suits our needs at the time.
At the lowest-detail end of the spectrum, ...
12
Ionic crystals are hard because of tight packing lattices, say, the positive and negative ions are strongly attached among themselves.
So, if mechanical pressure is applied to an ionic crystal then ions of similar charges may be forced to get closer to each other.
Now, by doing so, the electrostatic repulsion can be enough to split or disorient completely ...
12
Yes, $\ce{KHF2}$ is an ionic compound and a covalent compound. There is nothing exceptional about it; in fact, most compounds that we call ionic (not $\ce{NaCl}$, though) have covalent bonds in them. Consider $\ce{MgSO4}$ with ionic bonds between $\ce{Mg^2+}$ and $\ce{SO4^2-}$, and covalent $\ce{S-O}$ bonds within $\ce{SO4^2-}$. Consider $\ce{Na2CO3}$ with ...
12
Yup, they are definitely possible. Such salts are called as mixed salts. They furnish more than two ions when dissolved in water. A popular example is Mohr's salt, popularly used as a standard titrant to measure concentrations of oxidizing agents. It's (anhydrous) formula is:
$$\ce{Fe^{II}(NH4)2(SO4)2}$$
This salt on dissolving in water would split as:
$$\...
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