Learners' understanding of, and thinking about, chemical bonding

Some examples from ECLIPSE of what students have said relating to chemical bonding:

A double bond is different to a covalent bond

Bert suggests chemical bonding evolved

Calcium and oxygen would not need to bond, they would just combine, joining on to make up full shells

Chemical bonding and how atoms are joined together are completely different

Chlorine will donate more electrons to the carbon-chlorine bond than carbon, because carbon has got less

The balloon party-trick and momentary areas of dipole

The glue between particles dried, and it broke up

Sodium and chlorine don’t actually overlap or anything and would probably get held together by just forces

The force of lack of electrons pulls two hydrogen atoms together

See also:

Covalent bonding

Ionic bonding

Metallic bonding

Polar bonding

This is just one of a wide range of science topics that learners have talked about in ECLIPSE projects.

Return to ECLIPSE homepage

List of science topics

Dr Keith S Taber kst24@cam.ac.uk

University of Cambridge Faculty of Education

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