To understand the dipole moment found within either a chemical bond or chemical compound, we first need to revisit electronegativity. Now recall electronegativity, abbreviated as EN, is a measurement of an element's ability to attract electrons to itself. And the periodic trend that we need to remember is that electronegativity increases moving from left to right across a period or row and up a group.

So if we take a look here in terms of this periodic table, we'd say that we can see that the nonmetals, those in blue, have a higher electronegative value, with fluorine being the most electronegative. Now recall that noble gases are perfect, so we tend not to talk about their electronegativities. But because Krypton and xenon are lowered down and have larger shells involved, they sometimes can have electronegative values associated with themselves. Krypton being 3.0 and xenon being 2.6.

Here most of the 7th row is comprised of synthetically formed metals. So because they're so unstable, we don't give them electronegative values. And realize that over here in the bottom left corner we have francium which has the lowest electronegative value. So just remember, as we start talking about dipole moments, you need to remember that it's related to the electronegative values of these different elements.

So click on the next video and let's start talking about dipole moments.