Thread: Covalent Bonds

The compound Ammonia is made up of one Nitrogen, and 3 Hydrogen.

On the periodic table I see that Nitrogen has 7 protons, and 7 electrons. I also see that each Hydrogen has 1 proton, and 1 electron.

I am told that Ammonia is held together through a Covelant Bond. My question is: how does this work?

My only guess is that Nitrogen has 6 electrons in its 1st electron cloud, and only 1 in its 2nd. This would make it want more, correct? Also Hydrogen only has 1. This would make it want more correct?

Please clerify this if you can.

Ok no offence intended here but based on your picture and the level of complexity i would guess you are a GCSE student, so i will try and remember how they teach it at GCSE

Well Nitrogen has 7 electrons. So that means 2 in the first shell, and 5 in the 2nd shell. That means that the electron from each hydrogen covalently bonds with one electron in the 2nd shell of nitrogen, and then the 2 extra electrons in nitrogen exist as a lone pair.

This gives a 2nd shell in nitrogen with 8 electrons, like it wants.
and each hydrogen has 2 electons in the first shell, which they want

Im not sure what GSCE is, but im a freshman in highschool. Anyways, thank you for your quick response. You helped very much.

I take that back. I was working on my powerpoint. Trying to explain this concept, and I caught a snag.

I am under the impression that the 1st shell has a max of 2 electrons. The 2nd has a max of 6, the 3rd; a max of 10.


A Nitrogen atom has 7 electrons. Thats 2 in the 1st shell, 5 in the 2nd. That only leaves room for 1 more electron in the 2nd shell.

May i ask where this number 8 comes from?

Nevermind.. Apparently the 1st shell holds 2, the 2nd, 8, the 3rd 18... WIKI has bad imformation or something.. maby a read it wrong.. Anyways, got it.

GCSE is age about 14/15. but in america i don't know how they teach chemistry.

If you carry on with chemistry you will learn that everything you are currently learning about atomic structure is wrong, which is why wiki won't be much help =)

yeap, the bohr model of the atom is inaccurate. what u're learning now probably revolves around 1st shell having 2 electrons, and the rest having 8 each. just a header: the sun/planet model of an atom (the one normally shown to represent nuclear related physics) is wrong too.

I'd appreciate it if you told me what was RIGHT. :P

My purpose is to understand how elements can spontaneously come together to form a single amino acid. "in this case histidine"

well organic products typically exist in nature, for example the protiens in your body are long chains of amino acids, (like histadine)..btw i'm not a biologist so if i just said something totally wrong please correct me

To find the number of electrons used in covalent bonding, you need to look at the valence shell only. Although nitrogen has 7 electrons total as a neutral atom, the first two are in its first energy level and are thereby not part of the outer shell that is involved in bonding.If you follow your finger across the periodic table for the energy level that nitrogen is on (aka period 2), there are 2 valence electrons in its s orbital for that energy level, and 3 in the p orbital. Although nitrogen has 7 electrons total as a neutral atom, the first two are in its first energy level and are thereby not part of the outer shell that is involved in bonding.

Since nitrogen has 5 valence electrons, two of the electrons pair, leaving three to bond with other atoms. This allows three hydrogen atoms, which each have 1 valence electron, to pair their electron with nitrogen's. (AMMONIA)

When the covalently bonded AMMONIUM ion forms, one of the valence electrons that would normally be paired is excluded, and another hydrogen is allowed to pair with the lone electron. So you have NH4, and it will have an overall charge of +1, reflecting the excluded electron.

**This all makes more sense if you draw the Lewis dot structure and look at it...

SciTeach3773, This thread is over four years old. The OP has left high school chemistry far behind her, as well as high school itself by now.

But thanks, sciteach, for the interesting post. I'm going to direct a current member to this thread to read your post now, as it pertains to a recent discussion we had.