Welcome to MeowDose, a podcast that micro-doses STEM topics with humor, insight, and magic. Each MeowDose episode features a different excerpt from a Wooden Books series.
This episode is about Bonding, a topic written about in Essential Elements by Matt Tweed.
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Episode Transcript
Hey everyone, this is MeowDose. I'm Kitty. And today we're gonna be talking about bonding. In chemistry. There are other types of bonds, of course. But today we're talking about bonding in chemistry between atoms. Cool. Let's get to it. Bonding. In this book, they call it atomic stickiness, which I'm just, I'm a fan.
“Molecules are formed as atom’s outer electrons share dances.”
What? Dances? I mean, I guess, yeah, I really wish that I had learned about bonding as dance because that would have made so much sense. Wow. Okay.
“Losing or gaining electrons causes atoms to become positively or negatively electrically charged ions.”
What does that mean?
So every electron in an atom, and you can tell what atoms are, what they are, based on the amount of electrons they have. Based on a lot of different things. But really, it's the electrons and that's really what gives it its electrical charge. And the ions means that like they've lost an electron, like they gave it to someone else. They were like, “Here, I don't need this electron anymore. I'm gonna give it to you, and I'm gonna have one less electron. And you’re gonna have one more electron.” It's kind of like a favorite thing between ions. They give electrons to each other. But that's how you become like a charged ion. I don't think that's how you would become a charged ion. But that's how ions become charged ions.
“Most elements are either metals, which are electropositive. So they lose electrons to form cations, or nonmetals, which are electronegative. And they grab ions to form anions.”
So like, I always remember the difference between cations and anions, by saying a cation is paw-positive, pawsitive. Not just positive, but like a cat paw, because a cation is pawsitive. And if you can remember that a cation is pawsitive, then the opposite, the anion is negative. It doesn't have a cool thing. Sorry, anion.
Back to it.
“An ionic bond occurs when a positive (or pawsitive) cation lends electrons to a negative anion to give them both full stable outer orbitals, like the nearest noble gas.”
The noble gasses are elements in the periodic table. They’re on the far right column. They’re called noble gasses. They used to be called inert gasses, but they're called noble gasses, because they really have all of the electrons that they need in their outer shell. And there are multiple layers, multiple shells of space where electrons can be added. And as elements go down in the periodic table, there are more shells with more electrons. And what makes a particular element engage, bond, interact with other elements is what it has in its outer shell. So if it has, you know, a full set of electrons in its outer shell, it doesn't need anymore. It's fully stocked. It's not gonna give any away, but it's not gonna take any either, right? That's what the noble gasses are. Whereas an element that might have less electrons, not a full outer shell, it's ready to go. It's ready to exchange, to give away, its, you know, its few electrons in its outer shell. Or, it is Game On ready to take a bunch of electrons to fill its outer shell. That's kind of the main understanding of an ionic bond.
Back to it.
“Though tough and brittle with high melting points, many ionic bonds dissolve in water.”
That just means that water is such a badass solvent, that when it engages with ionic compounds, because water is so magical and has, you know, its own kind of electrical kind of engagement. I will do another small dose on water. But it means that these ionic compounds have intrinsic properties of strength and can't be separated. Unless, sometimes they're putting water and then they just kind of, they separate really easily. Water’s the best mix.
Okay back to it.
“Non-metals combine using covalent bonds, which shuffle and share outer electrons into pairs, again filling up any empty orbitals. The attraction felt by electrons for nuclei outweighing their mutual repulsions holds the resulting molecule together.”
Okay, cool.
Covalent bonds are interesting because unlike ionic bonds, where literally one atom is like, “Hey, I got an electric (laughter), I got an extra electron, I'll give it to you, because that makes me happier. And if you have my extra electron, then you're happier.” That's the ionic situation. But covalent, it's like it's not, it's not a full transfer of the electrons just kind of like sharing it. They're like, it's sometimes on one side, sometimes on another, it's very elusive. You don't really know where it is. That's why they talk about smearing electrons, because it's really hard to pinpoint the exact location of where the electron is. It is just known in covalent bonds that they're shared because they're happier together, right? Together, they make like a full outer shell, but separate, you know, they're having their own issues. And that's the difference with covalent bonds versus ionic bonds.
Okay, back to it. Oh, this one's fun.
“In metallic bonds, electrons float away from their nuclei. Dissociating into a sea around a lattice of positive ions, the conductivity and shininess of metals is the direct result of these mobile electrons and their strength and high melting points, result from the Love Struck relationship between the ions and their mates.”
That's a really fucking cute sentence.
So, the interesting thing about metallic bonds is that, you know, similar in the process of the ionic bonds, where it was very much like, “Hey, I got an electron, you need an electron. Let me give it to you, simple transaction. We're good.” Covalent bonds, it's kind of a gray area. I have it, you have it, maybe I don't have it, maybe you don't have it. It's a smear. But metallic bonds, literally just like shucked. They just like throw the electron into the space around them and they're like, “I'm good, right? I don't need that electron.” And it creates this, this kind of like, positive space in which the metallic bond can form. And this is, this is why metallic bonds are super weird. But we love them. We love them.
Anyways.
“Hydrogen attached to a non-metal pushes against unbonded lone pair electrons, creating a very slight charge difference across the molecule. If another electronegative atom is nearby, a weak hydrogen bond, vital in water and DNA, appears between them.”
Okay. Now I need to speak seriously about hydrogen bonds.
There is something about hydrogen. I mean, granted it is yes, we know first, first of everything first. First in the periodic table, you know that that's really where it is first. You know, it has one electron which means that hydrogen shows up with a pair. Two hydrogen show up together to create more stability. But when hydrogen is in a molecular compound like water, or other organic compounds, it has its own bond. And it's called a hydrogen bond. They literally have a bond named after it. And it's one of those small mysteries but it's not mysterious. But it is. It is mysterious that hydrogen has its own bond. And maybe that's why it's first, maybe it's just special. That’s all I can say, it's just special. But hydrogen bonding is critical to life. It's critical to understanding water structures. It's critical to all these things.
And hydrogen bonding, that hydrogen,…when it says that it creates a very slight charge difference across the molecule, it's kind of like taking the actual charge of the molecule and just kind of adjusting it. It's like maybe shifting it to one side, making a little, you know, where it's not the entire molecule is all the same charge. That the charge, there might be one side that's slightly more negative and slightly more positive. It's kind of, you start to get into some real gradients, in bonding. You know, chemistry really had the very first understanding of gradients and spectrums, and shit is not exact. I mean, when you're talking about electrons: it's never exact. It's never exact. They're like tiny, little, you know, mystery points in space that basically dictate all of life. That's an electron, dictator of life.
Anyways, back to it.
“With asymmetrical motions of electrons causing instantaneous small, van der Waals forces between atoms and overlapping orbitals, smearing pi bonds. Atomic glues come in many forms.”
Okay, so what the fuck is a van der Waals force?
A van der Waals force is kind of like, it shows up when a bunch of molecules are next to each other. So, if you have a certain amount of a particular material, there are forces in between the atoms connecting the atoms together. And then there's forces from some atoms to other atoms on the same molecule, or neighboring molecules. And then there's forces in between. And the forces in between are these van der Waals forces, where they're kind of, they're like not, they're like, not super, not super strong. But like, it kind of just, they're there.
I mean, it goes back to this idea.
I mean, this is chemistry, but it's also understanding atoms, as the building blocks for materials. And the science of materials is that they're fucking held together somehow, right? This book called it: atomic glues come in many forms. Bonding, really, is just atomic glue. Its atomic meaning is that it is related to atoms, and it's how they stick together. It's how they, you know, form buddies and form compounds and form the materials, in the water we put in our body and the water in our bodies and the water that we swim in, on this flying rock through their space. The atomic glues are the things that are holding all these atoms together. And my goodness, if we did not have atomic glue, everything would just be a bunch of dots. Electrons would be ruling everything, even more so than they already are.
That's it for bonding. Stay sticky.
MeowDose: atomic glue & you