chapter

18
Chemical Bonds
section ●
1 Stability in Bonding

What You’ll Learn Before You Read

■ about elements in a
Have you ever seen an object with rust on it? What was the
compound
■ chemical formulas object made of? Why do you think rust formed on it?
■ how electric forces help Rust on nail left outside
form compounds
■ why a chemical bond
forms

Study Coach
Read to Learn
Make Flash Cards As you
read, make a flash card of each
element mentioned in the text.
Combined Elements
Include the name of the Have you ever noticed that the Statue of Liberty is green?
element, its chemical symbol, Was it painted green? Is it made of green stone? Actually, the
and its electron dot diagram. Statue of Liberty is made of the metal copper. Copper is an
element. Pennies are also made of copper. If copper usually has
a shiny, metallic color, then why is the Statue of Liberty green?
Do compounds look like their elements?

Copyright © Glencoe/McGraw-Hill, a division of The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

Some matter around you is in the form of elements.
For example, oxygen, copper, and sulfur are all elements.
All three exist by themselves. They can also combine with
other elements in a chemical reaction to form compounds.
When copper, sulfur, and oxygen combine in a chemical
reaction, they produce the green coating like on the Statue of
●A Find Main Ideas Make Liberty. This compound is copper sulfate, which is a green
a Foldable like the one below. solid. It is nothing like the elements that combined to make
As you read this section, write
down the main ideas about
it. Copper is a shiny, copper-colored solid. Sulfur is a yellow
combined elements, formulas, solid. Oxygen is a colorless, odorless gas. When elements
and atomic stability. combine, they form compounds with their own properties.

Combined
Do compounds have new properties?
Elements
Compounds may have different properties from the elements
that form them. Sodium chloride, or table salt, is a compound
Formulas
made from the elements sodium and chlorine. Sodium is a
Atomic
shiny, soft, silvery metal that reacts violently with water.
Stability
Chlorine is a greenish-yellow, poisonous gas. These two
elements combine to form the salt that people use in their food.

312 CHAPTER 18 Chemical Bonds

 Formulas
The formula for sodium chloride is NaCl. Na is the
chemical symbol for the element sodium. Cl is the chemical
symbol for the element chlorine. Written together, they make
up the formula for sodium chloride. A chemical formula tells
what elements are in a compound and how many atoms of
each element are in one unit of the compound.
What is the formula for water? 1. Explain What does a
chemical formula tell you?
Let’s look at the formula for a compound you use every
elements in compound
day. H2O is the chemical formula for water. H is the symbol and how many atoms
for the element hydrogen. O is the symbol for the element
oxygen. The number 2 in the formula is called a subscript.
Subscript means “written below.” A subscript written after a
symbol tells how many atoms of that element are in one unit
of the compound. In H2O, the 2 tells you there are two atoms
of hydrogen in one unit of water. If there is no subscript after
a symbol in a formula, there is only one atom of that element
in the compound. So, in one unit of H2O there are two
hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom.
The table shows some familiar compounds and their
formulas. Notice that each kind of atom can be combined
with other atoms in many different kinds of compounds. For
instance, oxygen is a part of the compounds of sand, milk of
magnesia, cane sugar, and vinegar.
Copyright © Glencoe/McGraw-Hill, a division of The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

Picture This
2. Describe The formula for
cane sugar, or sucrose, is
C12H22O11. Describe what
one unit of cane sugar is
made of.
12 carbon 22 hydrogen
11 oxygen

Atomic Stability
Recall that protons have a positive charge and electrons
have a negative charge. These opposite electric forces attract
each other. They are the forces that hold atoms and molecules
together. The kinds of electric forces that hold atoms together
also bring atoms together to form compounds.

Reading Essentials 313

 1 2 13 14 15 16 17 18

Li Be B C N O F Ne

Na Mg Al Si P S Cl Ar

Picture This Why do atoms form compounds?

3. Interpret Scientific Look at the periodic table on the inside back cover of this
Illustrations How many book. It lists all the known elements. Most of these elements
electrons are in the outer can combine with others to form compounds that are more
energy level of an atom stable. Notice the six elements in Group 18. These elements
of carbon?
are gases called the noble gases. Atoms of the noble gases are
4
very stable. They are different from the other elements
because they almost never combine to form compounds.
Compounds that are formed with a noble gas are less stable
than the original noble gas atom.
Why are the noble gases stable?
A helpful way to picture the stability of the noble gases is
to look at the electron dot diagrams of those elements. An

Copyright © Glencoe/McGraw-Hill, a division of The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

electron dot diagram shows the symbol of the element. It also
shows the electrons in the outer energy level of an atom. The
number of electrons in the outer energy level of an atom
determines if that atom will combine to form a compound.
How do you know how many dots to put in an electron dot
diagram? For elements in Groups 1 and 2 and 13 through 18,
you can use the periodic table. The above shows two rows of the
periodic table. Look at the outer energy level of the
elements in Group 1. All elements in Group 1 have one outer
electron. The elements in Group 2 have two outer electrons.
Group 13 elements have three outer electrons, Group 14 elements
have four, and so on. The noble gases in Group 18 have eight
outer electrons.
What makes an atom stable?
An atom is chemically stable when its outermost energy level
has all the electrons it can hold. If an atom is chemically stable,
it does not easily form compounds with other atoms.

314 CHAPTER 18 Chemical Bonds

 Stable Noble Gases The figure to the right Picture This
shows electron dot diagrams of the noble gases. He 4. Describe How many
The first electron dot diagram is for helium. electrons are in the outer
Notice that there are two electrons around the energy level of xenon?
symbol for helium, He. Hydrogen and helium Ne 8
need only two electrons in their outer level to
be stable. The outer energy levels of all the Ar
other elements are stable when they contain
eight electrons.
Now look at the electron dot diagram for Kr
neon, Ne. There are eight electrons in neon’s
outer energy level. Neon is stable as an atom.
Neon does not become more stable if it forms a
Xe
compound. The noble gases are stable because
they already have the maximum number of Rn
electrons in their outer energy levels.
What elements have incomplete outer 5. Infer What makes noble
energy levels? gases stable?
max number of electrons
Hydrogen and helium are the only elements in the first row, in outer level
or period, of the periodic table. Both hydrogen and helium
need only two outer electrons to be stable. Helium has two
electrons in its outer energy level and is stable. But hydrogen
has only one electron. Its outer level is not full. Therefore,
hydrogen is more stable when it is part of a compound.
Look at the periodic table again. You can see that none of
the elements in Group 13 through Group 17 have full outer
Copyright © Glencoe/McGraw-Hill, a division of The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

energy levels. These elements are more stable when they

form compounds.
How do atoms become more stable?
As you have learned, hydrogen is an element that does not
have a full outer energy level. How does hydrogen, or any
other element become stable? Atoms that do not have a stable
outer energy level can do one of three things to complete
their outer level. They can gain electrons, lose electrons, or
share electrons to make a full outer level. Atoms combine with
other atoms that also do not have complete outer levels. This
way, each atom becomes more stable.
The figure on the next page shows electron dot diagrams
for sodium and chlorine. Sodium has one outer electron and
chlorine has seven. When these two elements combine,
sodium gives its outer electron to chlorine. Chlorine now has
eight electrons in its outer level. This is a full, stable energy
level. But what about sodium?

Reading Essentials 315

Picture This Sodium Combines with Chlorine to form Sodium Chloride
6. Use a Model Draw an
electron dot diagram of
sodium showing its new
outer energy level after it
has given its outer electron
to chlorine. Na Cl

wesdfghjuytdreswas

Na Cl
Sodium Chlorine

How can sodium become more stable?

Sodium gave up the only electron in its outer level when it
combined with chlorine to form sodium chloride. If sodium
loses the electron in the outer energy level, what is left? The
next energy level of the sodium atom has eight electrons. When
the one outer electron is removed, the next level becomes the
new outer level. Sodium now has a complete, stable outer
energy level. Sodium and chlorine exchanged an electron and
are now both stable in the compound they formed.
What is another way atoms can
become stable?

Copyright © Glencoe/McGraw-Hill, a division of The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

Remember that the formula for the compound water is H2O.
Hydrogen atoms need one electron in their outer level to be
stable. Oxygen atoms need two electrons to be stable. In this
case, neither atom can give up an electron. Instead, they share
electrons. Each hydrogen atom shares one electron from an
oxygen atom to complete its outer level. In turn, the oxygen
atom shares each of the two hydrogen atoms’ electrons to com-
plete its outer level. The compound water is more stable than a
hydrogen atom or an oxygen atom.
Atoms gain and lose electrons to become more stable.
7. Explain What happens to Recall that electrons have a negative charge and protons have
an atom’s charges when it
gains or loses an electron? a positive charge. Positive charges attract negative charges like
becomes - or + the opposite ends of a magnet. The force that holds atoms
together is called a chemical bond.

316 CHAPTER 18 Chemical Bonds

 After You Read
Mini Glossary
chemical bond: the force that holds atoms together in chemical formula: a formula that tells what elements and
a compound how many atoms of each element are in a compound

1. Review the terms and their definitions in the Mini Glossary. Find one chemical
formula you learned about in this section and explain the parts of the formula.
Sugar has 12 carbon 22 hydrogen and 11 oxygen

2. Complete the concept web to organize the information from this section.

Atoms

become more
stable by:

losing or gaining electrons

They can do this by:

Copyright © Glencoe/McGraw-Hill, a division of The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

share with other things get max electrons they just gain or lose

3. As you read this section, you made flash cards for the elements mentioned in
Study Coach

the text. Do you think that making flash cards would be a good way to learn the symbols
of all the elements in the periodic table? Why or why not?
nope since we did not make flash cards

End of
Section

Reading Essentials 317