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Tuesday 30 August 2011

Physics GRE - #29

Solid argon is held together by which of the following bonding mechanisms?

  1. Ionic bond only.
  2. Covalent bond only.
  3. Partly covalent and partly ionic.
  4. Metallic bond.
  5. Van der Waals bond

Solution :

Choice 5 is the answer.

Argon is not charged and stable as a monoatomic element (due to it's full orbitals). Thus, because it is stable alone, it does not ionically bond with itself since argon does not exist naturally as an ion. This eliminates choice 1.

Because covalent bonding occurs with electron sharing and the stability from filling unfilled orbitals, Argon does not covalently bond with itself since it already has full orbitals. This eliminates choice 2.

It cannot be partly ionic and partly covalent as we just stated above that it is to stable to do either. This eliminates choice 3.

Argon is not a metal and so it does not participate in metallic bonding (metallic bonding occurs in metals due to massive electron sharing among many metal atoms, but again, due to argon's completely filled orbitals, it is too stable to do this). This eliminates choice 4.

Van der Waals bonding occurs in all chemicals and compounds as they are mostly caused by instantaneously inducted dipoles due to movement of electrons in the atom. Argon is no exception to this rule. Hence choice 5 is the answer. Note that although Van der Waals bonding is always present, it is by no means the strongest bonding mechanism. If this question was applied to other elements, Van der Waals may not be the answer since it could be negligible compared to other bonding mechanisms.

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