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What's an Ion?

Feb 22, 2020
Well,

what

is an ion? People talk about ions all the time in chemistry. So

what

are they? Well, an ion is an atom or a group of atoms that have an electrical charge. Well that's it. Now how does this happen? Well, inside atoms, there are two things. that have an electrical charge, there are protons that have a positive charge and electrons that have a negative charge. Many times in atoms, the number of protons is equal to the number of electrons, so the charges balance and there is no total charge but sometimes An atom can gain or lose electrons so it gets more or less electrons and protons and then the numbers no longer balance out and it is left with more negative charge because it has more electrons or it is left with more positive charge because it has more protons, let me give you a couple of examples of how this happens.
what s an ion
Let's look at the sodium atom. Sometimes when I talk about atoms, I'll just draw them as the name of the element inside a circle to indicate that that's atom I. I'm talking, but for our purposes we're going to want to zoom in a little bit closer. I have drawn two things in this enlarged version of the atom. I have protons here in the nucleus in red and then flying around the outside I have these electrons that I have drawn as black dots. If you know much about atoms, you will know that I have left out the neutrons that also live in the nucleus, but it is not a big deal because neutrons have no charge.
what s an ion

More Interesting Facts About,

what s an ion...

Not at all, they are neutral, so they are not important to what we are talking about here anyway, right now sodium has if we count them 11 protons here in the nucleus and it has 11 electrons flying out, so the number of protons is equal to the number of electrons which means my total net charge is zero they cancel each other out and therefore something that has no net charge like this sodium atom we call it neutral okay but this is what can happen with sodium. You see this electron right here. If you lose this electron, you can lose it and it flies away and usually goes to another atom, so let's see what happens when this electron is lost and now we're going to end up with a sodium atom that has 11 protons just like it had. before but now because it was lost this electron used to be here that was here now it is no longer here now it only has 10 electrons so now the positive and negative charges no longer balance and I am left with more positive charge than negative charge, so this thing now it will have a charge of +1, a plus positive charge and a negative charge, so I can write this if I want to talk about the atom, I can write es na plus to show that it has a positive charge.
what s an ion
Where is this? When I talk about a neutral atom, I'll probably just write na, so na, also, here's an example of an ion, it's an atom, it has a charge, and it's a specific type of atom. We have a name for this. Call it a cation, which is what we call an atom. Sorry, be careful with what we call any ion that has a positive charge. Well, let me show you another example. Well, here you have an oxygen atom, the element that I have drawn here. it has eight protons here in the nucleus and it has eight electrons outside so we have the same number of protons and electrons which means the total charge is balanced plus negative balance so we have a net charge of zero and I can say that my oxygen atom is neutral it has no net charge but oxygen can gain or lose electrons and in fact it really likes to gain two electrons and here is a picture of oxygen atom after gaining two electrons and now It still has eight protons in the nucleus and if I count these electrons and now it has ten electrons instead of eight that it had before, so now the protons and electrons no longer balance each other and I have more negative charge and I have positive charge.
what s an ion
I have two more electrons and protons. So that means my total net load will be less. I can write the symbol for this ion as o2 minus to show that it has a charge of two minus. Where is this neutral guy here? I can do it. Oh, this is an ion because it has a charge and there is a specific name for it, we can call it anion, which is the word we use to describe a negatively charged ion that has more electrons and protons. Well, here's just a little vocabulary to review, so an ion is an atom or a group of atoms that have a charge, now it's possible for an atom to be neutral, which means it has no charge, which means it's not a ion, but if something is an ion, it can be a cation, which is what we call a positive ion, or it can be an anion, which is a negative ion.
Here's a way I can use to remember this, okay, an ion, I think. this represents a negative ion, okay, and then cation, can you remember this, it's very cheesy, can you. remember this because cats have legs and a cation is positive okay, you will never forget it I swear you will never forget it okay there is one more thing I want to mention I have said that an ion is an atom or group of atoms for charge I have not said yet nothing about the group of atoms, so more than one atom can come together, they can come together and form a group or cluster and then that whole group of atoms has a charge, when this happens we call it polyatomic. ion a group of atoms that have a charge poly means many and Atomic have many atoms together that form anions.
I'll talk about polyatomic ions in future videos so you want to check them out if you need to learn more about polyatomic anyway just to review what we've learned we learned that an ion is an atom or a group of atoms that have a charge and something gets a charge when the number of protons and electrons is not balanced you have more protons than electrons you will have an aggregate you will have an ion with a positive charge you call it a cation you have more electrons than protons you have an ion with a negative charge and you call that anion

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