Nature of the Chemical Bond IV : Bond Strength

Interpersonal relationships operate based on overlap of mutual trust, where partners in a transaction come together for mutual benefit and share in the entity produced by the combination of labours. You make deals with people and then stick to the deal as long as it is mutually beneficial to keep the deal going. Such is the nature of chemistry too - the strength of the partnership is termed the bond order.

There are two forms of chemical bonds - ionic and covalent. The topic was covered in a previous column - to summarize, ionic bonds are exclusive one element takes electrons, one element gives electrons and they stick together based on the positive negative charge interaction. I'd like to define this as Bond Order Zero - nothing between the nuclei. In human terms, think of it as casual sex.

The other type, the covalent chemical bond involves a sharing of the electrons by both partners elevating their control status to eight by pairing otherwise unshared electrons into hybridized overlapping orbitals. Say that again in english, dr. lenny.

Elements will share electrons in orbitals (regions of space that hold electrons) that overlap. Since elements have the same shapes of orbital in their outer configuration, this sharing drives the chemistry that allows transfer of these electrons. Half the chemistry that you can see involves passing electrons like dollars - somebody gives, somebody gets and everybody is happy. When nitrogen atoms team up, the nitrogen nitrogen bond is as strong a bond as any uin chemisty. Entu N2 : each nitrogen brings five electrons to the partners and shares three of the other nitrogen to give the grand total of eight. So the bond order for nitrogen is three. The orbitals are like banks, they tell you where you can keep your money.

By the way - atoms of elements used here will ignore isotopes for the time being. The time being is a physical creature who hangs onto realities that we have to return to and conceptualize later - so isotopes and their significance or insignificance is a must return subject. The time being dislikes the incestual nature of interpersonal triple bonds - they have such high maintenance energy that they are worth considering briefly, then ignoring, unless armed with a chemical like molybdenum or sulfur which make mockeries of multiple bonds.

Back to our story - Normal carbon - carbon organic bonds have a bond order of one. If you recall HONC-1234 - carbon prefers four single shared bonds. When it pairs to make carbon-carbon double bonds with bond order two, the second overlapping bond turns up in an antibonding orbital causing high reactivity. Say whut , dr . lenny? Orbital for the carbon-carbon double bond are somewhat different from the orbital for the oxygen-oxygen double bond.

Even though both oxygen and carbon are sharing four electrons mutually, the oxygen team of self is a much more accomodating set internally - much like a family unit. The carbon picture has each double bonded carbon with two other partners pulling away its attention frequency - more like a limited liability company type six partner business. If the latter business model could be tured from a double bond to a conjugated ring - lowering the bond order from two to one and one-half, the company might get better effort from the currently peripheral partners. This would be an application of Redile in action.

And with that, i must progress with day. NCB3