Concept
Chemical bond
Overview
A chemical bond is the association of atoms or ions to form molecules, crystals, and other structures. The bond may result from the electrostatic force between oppositely charged ions, as in ionic bonds; the sharing of electrons, as in covalent bonds; or some combination of these effects. Chemical bonds are described as having different strengths: there are "strong bonds" or "primary bonds" such as covalent, ionic, and metallic bonds, and "weak bonds" or "secondary bonds" such as dipole–dipole interactions, the London dispersion force, and hydrogen bonds.
Since opposite electric charges attract, the negatively charged electrons surrounding the nucleus and the positively charged protons within a nucleus attract each other. Electrons shared between two nuclei will be attracted to both of them. "Constructive quantum mechanical wavefunction interference" stabilizes the paired nuclei (see Theories of chemical bonding). Bonded nuclei maintain an optimal distance (the bond distance) that balances attractive and repulsive effects, as explained quantitatively by quantum theory.
The atoms in molecules, crystals, metals, and other forms of matter are held together by chemical bonds, which determine the structure and properties of matter.
All bonds can be described by quantum theory, but, in practice, simplified rules and other theories allow chemists to predict the strength, directionality, and polarity of bonds. The octet rule and VSEPR theory are examples. More sophisticated theories are valence bond theory, which includes orbital hybridization and resonance, and molecular orbital theory, which includes the linear combination of atomic orbitals and ligand field theory. Electrostatics is used to describe bond polarities and the effects they have on chemical substances.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
Found by search and not yet checked by a person; they may only mention the idea in passing.
Still more strongly will a similar presumption exist, when the object itself, as in the case of organized beings, is no primeval agent, but an effect, which depends on a cause or causes for its very existence. The Kinds, therefore, which are called in chemistry simple substances, or elementary natural agents, are the only ones, any of whose properties can with certainty be considered ultimate; and of these the…
John Stuart Mill, A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive
States what Chemical bond is.
The result is that a table of the equivalent numbers, or, as they are called, atomic weights, of all the elementary substances, comprises in itself, and scientifically explains, all the proportions in which any substance, elementary or compound, is found capable of entering into chemical combination with any other substance whatever.
John Stuart Mill, A System of Logic
States what Chemical bond is.
To Kant we owe the completed theory of matter as the unity of repulsion and attraction. The theory is correct, so far as it recognises attraction to be the other of the two elements involved in the notion of Being-for-self: and to be an element no less essential than repulsion to constitute matter. Still this dynamical construction of matter, as it is termed, has the fault of taking for granted, instead of deducing…
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, The Logic of Hegel
States what Chemical bond is.
Related ideas
- Humphry Davy
- Wave function
- Classical physics
- Molecule
- Atomic nucleus
- Niels Bohr
- Organic chemistry
- Oxygen
- Quantum mechanics
- Robert Boyle
- Carbon
- Atom
- Electron
- Energy
- Journal of the American Chemical Society
- Metallic bonding
Place in the tradition
Part of Philosophy of chemistry.