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Chemistry / Re: How does chlorine become chloride when it bonds?
« on: 19/03/2018 21:20:14 »Quote from: OP
everybody knows chlorine as poisonous. Why would we have chlorine in one of the most over-used foods...What makes Chlorine so dangerous is that it is eager to grab 1 extra electron to fill up its outer shell of electrons.
- It will do this to the surface of your lungs, skin and eyes, which is what makes it so lethal
- But after grabbing this electron, it becomes much more benign - somewhat like Argon just to its right, which also has this many electrons
- The same is true for the other elements in that right-hand column of the periodic table
What makes Sodium so dangerous is that it it is eager to give away 1 electron to empty its outer shell of electrons.
- It will do this to the surface of your skin and eyes, which is what makes it so dangerous (fortunately, it has more difficulty getting into our lungs than chlorine)
- But after donating this electron, it becomes much more benign - somewhat like it's neighbor Neon, which also has this many electrons (you read the periodic table across and down, just like English, so Neon is just before Sodium)
- The same is true for the other elements in that left-most column of the periodic table
Sodium+Chlorine→Sodium Chloride is bliss on the kitchen table:
- Chlorine desperately wants to grab an extra electron
- Sodium desperately wants to give away an electron
- They do an electron swap; this is called an ionic bond, and tends to happen between elements on opposite sides of the periodic table
- it makes a fairly safe salt which we sprinkle on our boiled eggs in the morning
- Warning: Do not react Chlorine+Sodium at home! They are both very dangerous, and their romance is explosive...
The fact that elements above and below in the periodic table have similar (but not identical) properties is one thing that makes the periodic table so very useful.
There are other ways of joining atoms together - the organic molecules in our bodies frequently make use of covalent bonds, which occurs between elements which are "closer together" on the periodic table*
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemical_bond
*those actinides & lanthanides look like they push elements far apart, when they shouldn't....
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