frustration

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BoneMental

BoneMental

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I've been using The Princeton Review's MCAT book and some of the questions/answers I am encountering are really annoying me, simply because I'm disagreeing with them.

For example,

1) Which is stronger, ionic or polar covalent?
A: I said ionic, but apparently, you "can't tell." I was always taught that ionic was the strongest...?

Can someone tell me what they think? I figure I should probably get this cleared up before I take my test soon...
 
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How does whether it is polar covalent or ionic affect the bond strength? I thought bond strength was affected by the type of bond it was (single, double, triple), the electronegativity of the two atoms in the bond, and it all is quantified by the bond dissociation energy. Am I wrong/semi-right/halfway right?

These factors contribute to the length of the bond, right?
 
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Ionic bonds are typically stronger than covalent bonds but this is not always the case. You "cannot tell" because the questions says nothing about the chemical environment. In a polar protic environment the ionic bonds would be broken more readily than covalent bonds. The strength of ionic bonds can be found from Coulomb's law so I believe you would have to take into account the distance between the ions and the charge on the ions.
 
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Fing Fang Foom said:
Ionic bonds are typically stronger than covalent bonds but this is not always the case. You "cannot tell" because the questions says nothing about the chemical environment. In a polar protic environment the ionic bonds would be broken more readily than covalent bonds. The strength of ionic bonds can be found from Coulomb's law so I believe you would have to take into account the distance between the ions and the charge on the ions.
Click to expand...

I just covered reading this today. Thanks 🙂
 
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doesn't sigma and pi bonds determine the strength?

For example, carbon is made up of sigma bonds and diamonds consist of carbon but is made up of pi bonds, and obviously you know diamonds is one of the hardest substances.

just throwin it out there, doubt it helps.
 
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