Week 3: Chemical Bonding

When I read the article in the handout from class, I had a hard time understanding all of the material. I could easily envision how an ionic, covalent and multiple bonds worked (or at least I thought so) from reading the assignment. But, I had a harder time understanding polar and non-polar covalent bonding…probably, because in my mind’s eye, I couldn’t grasp how these concepts would work in actuality.

Then, I checked out the link for this week about the same subject to see if there was more material available online…and indeed there is. The flash animations really helped me understand how we think atoms and molecules work. But, the funny thing is, that the way the shared electrons move back and forth between the two different elements wasn’t at all how I had thought it worked when I imagined it in my mind. Even what I thought I understood about how covalent bonds worked - was different that I had imagined! And, I’ll bet that these models are just our best bets about how it all works…on a quantum level.

According to the ThinkQuest website, “…have the electrons outsmarted us? Perhaps, but they have also taught us one of the most fundamental lessons in quantum physics - an observation is only valid in the context of the experiment in which it was performed. If you want to say that something behaves a certain way or even exists, you must give the context of this behavior or existence since in another context it may behave differently or not exist at all. We can't just say that an electron is a particle…we can only say that when we observe the electron in the two slit experiment it behaves like a particle. To see how it would behave under different conditions, we must perform a different experiment.”

So, maybe we don’t really know how these bonds work at all…check out this animation on You Tube, “Dr. Quantum Double Slit Experiment” to see more about these enigmatic electrons!