The Drive to Bond: An Energetic Perspective

Explain chemical bonding as a process driven by the minimization of a system's total potential energy.

Define electronegativity and use its difference (ΔEN) to predict the character of a bond along the ionic-covalent spectrum.

Describe ionic bonding as the result of electron transfer between atoms with large ΔEN, stabilized by the electrostatic attraction quantified by lattice energy.

Describe covalent bonding as the sharing of electrons via constructive overlap of atomic orbitals between atoms with small ΔEN.

Analyze a potential energy curve for a diatomic molecule to explain the concepts of bond length and bond energy as features of an energetic landscape.