What happens to atoms during chemical reactions?
1 Answer
Some of them exchange electrons and some of them share those.
Explanation:
They exchange atoms, if you are talking about electrovalent bonds. Suppose you've got two atoms. One is Sodium (
It's a habit of the atoms to thrive to have as many electrons as the noble gas nearest to them in the periodic table has. Most of the atoms want to have 8 electrons in their outer shell.
So,you can see that if Sodium loses one electron somehow,it can have 8 electrons in its outer shell as the shell M would not exist anymore and on the other hand if Chlorine can gain one electron somehow,it'd have 8 electrons in its outer shell. So it's quite sure that these two would like to bond with each other as they can fulfill their needs perfectly.
So when they'd react, Sodium would contribute one electron to Chlorine and Sodium would form a
So you've got Sodium Chloride (NaCl).
All other chemical reactions sorta work like this unless they are convalent bonds. At the time of convalent bonding,the atoms do not exchange electrons,they share it.
If you have got a Carbon (
You got Methane (CH4).