Electronegativity and Polarity

Hello all, and welcome to one of the less interesting blogs that we have to offer you.  Unfortunately it is important information so we'll try to make it as short and sweet as possible.  This is an electronegativity chart showing the charges for how easy/hard it is for each of these elements to loose an electron(s).  For instance, elements like Cesium is much more likely to give away its electron to another element (such as fluoride).  Make sense so far?  I hope so.














These charges can be used to determine what kind of bond you are looking at.  So, for example, you were looking at what kind of bond sodium and chlorine would make.  You would find their electronegativity difference.  


Na= 0.9                                              3.0-0.9= 2.1
Cl= 3.0
(if you get a negative answer, then think of what you have as having absolute value bars around it, just make it positive)
Based on this chart...and on prior knowledge, we know that this is an ionic bond.  However, when you do the same process with say, Nickel and oxygen, you will see that it instead comes up as a covalent bond.  That is something that will be explained more next year.

Here is the promised video to help keep the difference between the three rememberable.  If you can't deal with bad corny science songs, then don't click play.  Otherwise, I hope it helps!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oNBzyM6TcK8

Part 2: knowing how to draw these.

Luckily, for the most parts, it is drawn as a regular lewis dot structure; which you already know how to do right? Right.  The only difference, is you need to indicate which atoms would become positive (loose electrons)  and which would be come negative (gain electrons)  Then draw an arrow pointing toward the negative one.  Have no idea what is being said, well, here is a nice long video that takes you back to periodic trends and explains it a bit more.

Best of luck :)