Chemical bonding- Human bonding

One more publication in Afternoonvoice.  Thanks to my dear Vaidehi akka of http://afternoonvoice.com/

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Many students find it difficult to study chemistry. Most of them are unable to imagine the concepts like electron shifting, excitation, interaction, formation of bonds and so on which are very basic in chemistry. Unless a student understands these concepts he can’t understand chemistry.

Man being a social animal interacts with different people in different ways in different circumstances. We can see many kinds of bonds between individuals like personal bonding, professional bonding, bonding with the community, class, gender group, peers etc. One’s behaviour with his friends, relatives, parents, neighbours, enemies, competitors etc are totally different from one another. These are the subject matters of Sociology. But how would it be, if we combine Sociology and Chemistry to understand the concepts like chemical bonding?!!

Yes, I have found some similarities in the types of chemical bonds and in the types of human relationships. You would be surprised to know that how similar kind of incidents occur between living and non-living things!

1)   Covalent bond:  It is a type of bonding in which two atoms share their electrons and form a bond. Here both the atoms are equal. Because both the atoms donate one electron each for bonding.

I see these atoms like friends. They are equal. Unless there is equality and an input of common interest, the friendship can’t remain for long time.

2)   Ionic Bond: This is a type of bonding which takes place between oppositely charged ions. Unlike poles attract each other and like poles repel each other.

    As we all know, we can correlate this interaction with attractions between boys and girls.

3)  Vander Waal’s interaction: It is a very weak interaction between two adjacent atoms of different molecules.

This is like the relationship between neighbours. The neighbours keep good relationship unavoidably because help in critical moments comes from neighbours only. But this bond may not be quite deep seated. For instance, if we shift our house from one place to another, then the new neighbours become more important and the earlier ones are sidelined.

4)  Coordinate bond: This is a type of bond in which one atom or a group donates its lone pair of electrons and forms the bond. The electrons required for the bonding belongs to only one atom. And the other atom is totally electron deficient.

This is a type of bonding which we can see between a child and parents. Child is not capable of fulfilling its needs on its own. Parents will support the child and nurture it by providing all the things that it needs. The speciality of parent - child relation is that in the beginning the coordinate bond exists. Later covalent bond comes into picture. Further the coordinate bond reappears in the opposite direction to the previous one along with the presence of covalent bond. Let me explain it more specifically. In the beginning, when child is very small, parents will donate everything to child. As the child grows and becomes an adult, commonly there exists a covalent type of bonding. Many parents treat their children as their friends. There would be sharing of ideas between parents and children. Further, when the son/ daughter gets a job and starts earning and the parents get retired, then it is the son/ daughter’s responsibility to look after his/her parents. Here, son/ daughter will fulfil the requirements of parents. But this is not a coordination bond like the earlier. Here mutual respect exists. Hence, it is covalent too.

        If a chemistry teacher teaches chemistry in this way in the class room, definitely students will feel chemistry to be an easy subject as they can correlate the things with their daily life and won’t feel chemistry to be an abstract subject. Another benefit of this kind of presentation is, in addition to the knowledge of chemistry, the teacher will be giving some social values like children’s responsibility towards parents, which should be imbibed in our life.