Electricity, atomic nature

Significance of the Faraday s laws, e= F/N relationship between the Faraday, Avogadro s number and the charge on the electron Besides the practical applications so far described, Faraday s laws have an important significance in so far as theoretical interest goes. The laws have introduced the concept of atomic nature of electricity. 

The construction of an electrical model of an atom naturally led to the hope that chemical behavior could be explained or deduced from the classical laws of electricity. But it was soon apparent that these laws were inadequate to explain even how such atoms could exist, much less the complex facts of chemistry. The field was open to the introduction of new assumptions about the behavior of positive... 

It should be apparent that there must be some force between molecules that are nonpolar because CH4, He, CO2, and similar molecules can be Uquefied. These forces must also be electrical in nature but cannot be the result of an overall charge separation within the molecules. If we consider two hehum atoms as shown in Figure 5.1, it is possible that at some instant both of the electrons in one atom will be on the same side of the atom. There is an instantaneous dipole that will cause an instantaneous change in... 

Berzelius maintained that the force holding atoms together in an inorganic molecule or in an organic radical was electrical in nature (which eventually turned out to be right, as a matter of fact). Every molecule, then, had to contain a positive portion and a negative portion, since only between oppositely charged elements was there attraction. 

The elements on the periodic table can be classified as metals, nonmetals, metalloids, or noble gases. Metals tend to be shiny and have atoms that give up electrons. Metals are malleable and tend to be excellent conductors of heat and electricity. By nature, nonmetals do not conduct electricity and have atoms that do not naturally give up electrons however, they do tend to accept electrons. The metalloid elements are located along the heavy black stair-step line on the right-hand side of the periodic table. Boron, silicon, germanium, arsenic, antimony, tellurium, polonium, and astatine are classified as metalloids. 

The electrical conductivity of chelate polymers depends highly on the metal atom nature, the ligand nature, and the size and shape of the macromolecules [26], Ccnductivity measurements were made over a wide range of temperatures (300-500 K). The logarithm of the electrical conductivity is a linear function of the reciprocal temperature in this range. The activation energy (Ea) and the specific conductivity (to) of the polychelates were calculated using the expression a = Go exp (-Ea/2kT), where a is the electrical conductivity at TK and k is Boltzmann constant (Table 1). 

In this chapter we consider some of the experiments that led to the conclusion that the atom is electrical in nature. Dalton s concept of a structureless atom provided no mechanism to explain these observa tions. These experiments, started over 150 years ago, also culminated in the discovery of X rays and radioactivity (Section 25.1). The spontaneous disintegration of naturally radioactive atoms into smaller particles contradicts the Daltonian hypothesis that atoms are unalterable. In turn, these discoveries inaugurated a more complete theory of the structure of atoms—the nuclear theory of the atom—and reaffirmed the atom as the unit of chemical changes. 

For reasons discussed later in this text (Chapter 7), water has two partially positively charged (S" ) hydrogen atoms (attractive to anions) and a partially negatively charged (8 ) oxygen atom (attractive to cations). The extent to which solution occurs depends upon a balance between two forces, which are both electrical in nature ... 

It should be mentioned that table 12 includes also a few values which were not present in the original paper, and that it rationalizes the values in terms of electrical charge, nature of atom, and number of simple or multiple C-X bonds. 

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