Post 7

What are

Molecules?

Well,remembering we brought up Lego in our last post,molecules are basically 2 atoms or more held together with very strong chemical bonds.If you find this hard to imagine,just imagine 2 lego pieces stuck together.

Very tightly.

They are still extremely small though,and most of them cannot be seen with the naked eye,except for macromolecules,(large molecules).

A molecule may consist of atoms of a single chemical element(a pure chemical substance consisting of only one type of atom),or of different elements(molecules can also consist of very little atoms or a lot of atoms).

Although the bonding of atoms can be very strong,there are also different types of bonds and the strengths of bonds do vary.

I'll just give an example on the covalent bond,one of the various ways of bonding.

The simplest way of the covalent bond is when one or more electrons are drawn into the space between the two atomic nuclei. Here the negatively charged electrons are attracted to the positive charges of both nuclei, instead of just their own(negative is attracted to positive).This overcomes the repulsion between the two positively charged nuclei of the two atoms(positive repels positive like negative will repel negative), and so this overwhelming attraction holds the two nuclei in a fixed position(although they will still vibrate due to diffusion).

A very basic recap on what we have talked about:



Links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molecule
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemical_bond
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SVyEpeniCzQ&feature=related