In the "Heart of Chemistry", I wrote about electrostatic forces being a fundamental concept in chemistry. In this post, I would like to build upon this idea.
I think it is useful to name the types of electrostatic forces of attraction that students need to be comfortable with when studying chemistry. I believe these to be:
- Electrostatic forces of attraction
- Between protons in the nucleus of an atom and electrons in orbitals (most importantly, the electrons in the highest filled energy level)
- Between positive ions and negative ions (otherwise known as ion-ion interactions)
- Between positive ions and slightly negative regions on another molecule (and vice versa). These are otherwise known as ion-dipole interactions.
- Between slightly positive regions and slightly negative regions of different molecules (these are known as intermolecular forces, which can be further broken down).
- Electrostatic forces of repulsion
- Between negatively charged electrons (particularly useful when looking at the higher energy attained by electrons that occupy the same orbital).
And that's it! A nice quick post, but I will look to build on it further soon.