BY: ALEXIS LOVINGS, ALEX HANANIA, ANDRE SHANNON, AND ZYAN GANI OCTOBER 18,2013

Electronegativity is defined as the ability of an atom in a molecule to attract a shared electron pair to itself,forming a polar covalent bond. Electronegativity is directly related to an atom’s ionization energy, the size of the radius,and the electron affinity. In other words the greater an atom’s electronegativity the greater its ability to attract electrons to itself an reside near that atom.

An atom’s electronegativity is measured by the polarity of the bonds between various atoms. The Pauling Scale is what we use to decipher which elements have a high or low electronegativity. The values range from 0.07 as the lowest and 4.0 as the highest.

A Nonpolar covalent bond is a bond that occurs between two nonmetal atoms that have the same electronegativity, and as a result have an equal sharing or distribution of the bonding pair electron.. If the difference in the electronegativity for an atom’s bond is less than 0.5 it is considered to be non polar.

A Polar covalent bond is a bond that occurs between two nonmetal atoms that have different electronegativities and have an unequal sharing of the bonding electron. This separation between the two charges is called a “Dipole”, and is represented by the Greek letter delta to represent a partial charge. If the difference in the electronegativity is less than 1.7 the bond is considered to be polar covalent.

An ionic bond occurs in which one or more of electrons from an atom are removed or transferred onto another atom. As a result the atom may contain a positive or negative ion. ( anion /cation) If the difference of the electronegativity is greater than 1.7 it is considered to ionic.

How to Calculate the differenceChart