Consider the elements Mn, Al, C, S, and Si. Which element forms the strongest π bonds?

Video transcript

All right. Hi, everyone. So this question is asking us to predict which of the following elements will form the strongest py bonds. Option A is phosphorus. Option B is tin. Option C is nitrogen and option D is potassium. No recall first and foremost, right, that a pi bond is a type of covalent bond and covalent bonds are bonds in between two nonmetals in which electrons are being shared between them. Right? So of the four answer choices being listed here, I can actually go ahead and eliminate two of them. First, I can eliminate option B which is tin and then I can eliminate option D which is potassium. And the reason for this is because they're both medals, which means that they're not actually going to participate in any sort of COVID bond, which means that in order to answer this question, we would have to compare phosphorus versus nitrogen, which are two non metals in this case. Now, when it comes to a pie bond, specifically recall that a pi bond is formed when the P orbitals of two atoms overlap side by side. So we can determine the strength of a pyon that's being formed by the ability of a given atom to overlap its P orbitals. And to consider this, we have to consider the size of the individual elements or atoms, right, because recalled strength of the bond is correlated to the length of the bond itself in the sense that the shorter the pond is the stronger it happens to be. So recall that as the atom itself increases in size, the distance between individual atoms bonding together is also going to increase. So as you increase the distance between these atoms, then P orbitals cannot overlap with each other as easily, meaning that you cannot form the strongest pi bond, right. So just to recap here, as the atom itself gets larger, the distance between two atoms increases. And so what that does is the result in longer covalent bonds. And in the context of pi bonding, specifically, the larger the distance between to atoms, the less P orbitals can overlook, which means that the pi bond itself becomes weaker. No recalled phosphorus and nitrogen are both found in group five a of the periodic table. However, Invitrogen is found in period two, whereas phosphorus is beneath it in period three. Now recall that the atomic radius actually increases as you go down a group in the periodic table. Which means that because phosphorus is beneath nitrogen in group five A, it happens to be larger in size, which means that nitrogen being the smaller element is going to form shorter pie bonds, meaning that its py bonds are going to be stronger than those of phosphorus. So our answer is going to be option c in the multiple choice because nitrogen is the element that will form the strongest pi bonds. And with that being said, thank you so very much for watching. And I hope you found this helpful.