Main Group Elements: Bonding Types - Online Tutor, Practice Problems & Exam Prep

• Chemical bonds within main group elements
• Not considering ionic bonds
• Major intra molecular bonds: metallic, covalent, covalent network
• Periodic table shows metals in green, nonmetals in red, metalloids in orange
• Transition metals are not part of main group
• Metallic bonding is for metals
• Covalent bonding for majority of nonmetals
• Metalloids exhibit covalent network bonding
• Carbon is a nonmetal with covalent network bonding
• Covalent network elements have highest boiling/melting points

Bonding Types

Hey everyone. So in this video we're going to take a look at some of the chemical bonds that exist within the main group elements. Now ionic bonds also fit under this type of chemical bond. We're not going to be paying attention to those here. We're going to say the major intra molecular chemical bonds are metallic, covalent and covalent network bonding.

Here, if we take a look, we have our periodic table. In blue we have our non metals, in red we have our metals and in green we have our metalloids. We also have some other shading such as these orange borders as well as these purple ones, which we'll talk about. Also look at our periodic table and see that we have our transition metals in this pit right here. Now we know that this pit is much larger and has more elements, but again, we're not paying attention to the transition metals. We're looking at our main group elements.

So coming back up here, we'd say that metallic bonding is indicative of metals. It's in the name. Next we have covalent bonding. This is typical for a majority of the nonmetals. Our metalloids are the elements that do covalent network bonding. Now of course in chemistry there are exceptions. The first one happens to be carbon. Although carbon is not a metalloid because it's not in a green box, it is the only nonmetal with covalent network bonding.

Also, we'd see that tellurium and acetene, although they're metalloids, they do not possess covalent network bonding. So here we'd say that tellurium and acetene go here you don't have to go into further detail in terms of this. Just remember they don't possess covalent network bonding unlike the other metalloids. Now recall that we've talked about this in previous chapters. When it comes to covalent network elements, they have the greatest overall boiling points and melting points amongst the elements of the periodic table.

Just keep this in mind while we're taking a look at our main group elements of the three major types of intermolecular chemical bonds that we care about are metallic, covalent and covalent network bonding.

Main Group Elements: Bonding Types Example

In this example, it says to identify the element that is expected to have the highest melting point. If we take a look here at our options, we have iodine, magnesium, bromine, carbon and sodium.

If we take a look, we know that one of these elements is capable of doing covalent network bonding because remember, they're the ones that have the highest general boiling points and melting points. If we take a look back at the periodic table from earlier, we'll see that carbon is the only element out of this list that's given that has the potential to create covalent network bonding.

This will result in it having the highest melting point in this list. So here our final answer is option D.

What is the most common type of chemical bonding found within I₂ solid?

• A. Covalent
• B. Network Covalent
• C. Ionic
• D. Organic
• E. Metallic