January 23, 2018

The types of electrostatic forces of attraction in chemistry

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 […]

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:

  1. Electrostatic forces of attraction
    1. Between protons in the nucleus of an atom and electrons in orbitals (most importantly, the electrons in the highest filled energy level)
    2. Between positive ions and negative ions (otherwise known as ion-ion interactions)
    3. Between positive ions and slightly negative regions on another molecule (and vice versa). These are otherwise known as ion-dipole interactions.
    4. Between slightly positive regions and slightly negative regions of different molecules (these are known as intermolecular forces, which can be further broken down).
  2. Electrostatic forces of repulsion
    1. 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.

Article written by louiebarnett

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