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Joe_Q t1_iu4eq9c wrote

Reply to comment by SmorgasConfigurator in Is an ionic bond really stronger than a covalent bond??? by jeez-gyoza

This is a great answer. TBH I've always found it odd that we teach the concept of "ionic bonds" in introductory classes. IMO thinking of them as bonds can be very unintuitive and misleading, for the reasons you reference in your answer.

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SmorgasConfigurator t1_iu4h4pz wrote

Yeah, "bonds" is a fuzzy concept. We also have "intermolecular bonds", but they are even farther from a well-defined structure and require analysis in terms of a distribution of relative configurations.

But I suppose these terms arose historically and are based on some phenomenology of human experiences. Say stuff that sticks together at room temperatures might be understood as "bonded together". So then only gases are understood as lacking bonds. With our molecular level understanding nowadays, that puts very different things in the same conceptual bucket. But history is hard to rewrite...

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