the.com/covalent
the most committed relationship in chemistry, where atoms split everything fifty-fifty
means Describing a chemical bond in which two atoms share one or more pairs of electrons rather than handing them over outright.
from A 20th-century scientific coinage stitching the Latin prefix 'co-' (together, jointly) onto 'valent,' from Latin 'valens' meaning 'being strong' or 'having power' — the same root behind 'valiant' and 'value.' In chemistry 'valence' came to mean an atom's combining power, so 'covalent' literally describes atoms exercising that power together. The term spread as chemists worked out how atoms actually link up; it sits beside its rival 'ionic,' where one atom simply takes the electrons and runs.
- shared custody
- atoms split electrons instead of stealing them
- diamond strength
- pure covalent bonds make Earth's hardest natural material
- life's glue
- every molecule in your body relies on them
- silent name
- coined in 1939, decades after the bonds were understood
- single to triple
- atoms can share one, two, or three electron pairs
water molecule — h2o has covalent bonds between hydrogen and oxygen atoms sharing electrons
diamond crystal — each carbon atom bonded to 4 others via covalent bonds in tetrahedral structure
methane gas — ch4 with 4 c-h covalent bonds, primary component of natural gas