Ionic and covalent Bonding Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Ionic and covalent Bonding - Essay Example The element that loses electrons forms cations while the element that gains electrons forms anions and the opposite charges form the ions to constitute the bonding (Saha 2010, p. 4). Covalent bonding however defines attractive forces between atoms through sharing of electrons. Each atom in the bond is unstable but is requires high energy to either gain or lose electrons and therefore shares electrons with a nearby atom. Covalent bonding may occur between atoms of the same element or atoms of different elements. The shared electrons forms part of the energy levels of both of the atoms and the attraction to each of the atom’s nuclei forms the bonding (Khanna, Verma and Kapila n.d., p. 230). Ionic bonding works through attraction between the formed ions. The bond between sodium and chlorine to form sodium chloride illustrates this. Sodium atoms lose electrons from their outer most energy levels and therefore form ions with positive charges, sodium ions. Chlorine atoms gain the lost electrons into their outer most energy levels to form chloride ions with negative charges. The sodium and chloride ions then attract each other to form sodium chloride compound under ionic bond. The bond between chlorine atoms in a chlorine molecule however illustrates covalent bonding. Since the two atoms have high and equal affinity for an electron, they donate an electron each, that they share in the outer most energy level to attain stability (Saha 2010, p. 4; Khanna, Verma and Kapila n.d., p. 230). The main similarity between covalent and ionic bonding is the resultant bond that is created between atoms. Both ionic and covalent bonds also identify transfer of electrons across atoms towards formation of bonds (Vandermeer 2011, p. 157). Despite the similarities between the two types of bonds, they have many differences. The first difference is in the transfer of electrons in the