Ionic Compounds

During this section we learned about the ionic compounds and how they function. We learned that Cations are atoms that lose electrons, most commonly metals and that Anions are atoms that gain electrons, most commonly non-metals. Some atoms form ionic bonds which is a cation held together with and anion due to electrostatic forces. Cations always have a positive charge while the Anions always have negative charges. We also learned how to write the formulas of the different elements by using the cross-over method. When using the metal, non-metal¨ide¨ format you always change the second element in the compound to where is ends in ¨ide¨. Transitional metals are the weird ones, instead of always having a full set they either want an empty, half, or full shell. While considering all of these different rules when you get to Polyatomic ions they change again. Changing the ending of ¨ide¨ to ¨ate¨, you have 2 non-metals instead of only 1, and they all have an overall oxidation state of negative one. Putting all of the rules together and writing out the formulas was a little difficult because sometimes you might use one rule whereas other times you would not. Although, altogether this section was not extremely difficult.