51
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Has a carbon compound ever been found having an ionic bond?
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 ...
- 30k
36
votes
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Can 100% covalent bonds exist?
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 $\ce{H+H-}$ ...
- 39k
26
votes
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If I drink water without sipping, is there a chance of saliva diffusing into my bottle?
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 ...
- 18k
23
votes
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Are all NO3- salts soluble in water? If so, why?
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 ...
- 10.2k
22
votes
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Are metallic/ionic bonds weaker than covalent bonds?
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 ...
- 656
21
votes
The impossibility of 100% ionic bond
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 ...
- 1,120
20
votes
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Is KF the most ionic compound?
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."
...
- 27k
20
votes
Has a carbon compound ever been found having an ionic bond?
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 ...
- 201
19
votes
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What is Sodium Chloride like in gas state?
No, in the gas phase sodium chloride exists as a monomer (the sodium chloride molecule) along with its dimer $\ce{Na2Cl2}$. The dimer has a roughly rectangular shape and is quite floppy with ...
- 82.2k
18
votes
Is the bond in HF ionic while it is covalent in HCl?
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 $\ce{Na^{+} Cl^{-}}$ ...
- 82.2k
18
votes
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How can FeS2 be the formula of iron sulphide and CaC2 be the formula of calcium carbide?
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^...
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17
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Salts that are more hydrophilic than NaCl
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 ...
- 1,659
16
votes
Salts that are more hydrophilic than NaCl
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 ...
- 39k
16
votes
Why does KCl come in amber coloured bottles?
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 ...
- 64.3k
16
votes
Why exactly does molten NaCl explode, when it is poured into water?
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)...
- 64.3k
16
votes
What is the analogue of "molecule" for ionic compounds?
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 $\ce{NaCl}$ ...
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15
votes
Why isn't water an ionic compound?
No compound is purely ionic. Water is about 33% ionic.
Linus Pauling discusses the ionic character of water in his famous "The Nature of the Chemical Bond" [1] at pages 100-101.
Pauling says as a ...
- 39k
15
votes
Accepted
Why are ionic compounds bad conductors of electricity in solid state?
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, ...
- 10.1k
15
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Why are so many ionic compounds brittle?
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 ...
- 683
15
votes
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Effect of noble gas configuration on polarising power
Recall the fact that the basic difference between an ionic bond and a covalent bond, is basically just charge separation. In ionic bonds, charges are well separated, and the bond arises due to ...
14
votes
Is KHF2 an ionic compound or a covalent compound?
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. ...
- 30k
14
votes
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Why does KCl come in amber coloured bottles?
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 ...
- 256
14
votes
How do you explain the formula Fe3O4 using the ionic compound theory?
Iron forms both $\ce{Fe^2+}$ and $\ce{Fe^3+}$ ions. The first combine with oxygen ions to $\ce{FeO}$; the second $\ce{Fe2O3}$.
$\ce{Fe3O4}$ can be thought of as a mixture of both compounds in equal ...
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14
votes
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Which has higher lattice energy: MgO or LiF?
$\ce {MgO}$ ($\approx 3800$ $\pu{kJ mol^{-1}}$) 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^{...
- 5,196
14
votes
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Are all ionic compounds salts?
Interestingly, IUPAC states that a "salt" is "a chemical compound consisting of an assembly of cations and anions". Under this definition, all ionic compounds are salts, and all salts are ionic ...
- 26.4k
13
votes
Covalent and Ionic Bonds
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 ...
- 4,208
13
votes
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Is calcium chloride an acidic or basic salt?
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 ...
- 20.7k
12
votes
Is melting/boiling point of ionically bonded substance higher than of covalently bound?
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 ...
- 32.6k
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