Data for Polyatomic Ions

Posted: Thu Jul 14, 2005 10:35 am Post subject: Data for Polyatomic Ions

Polyatomic ions are electrically charges collections of two or more atoms. Polyatomic ions usually have a charge because the collection of atoms has either gained an extra electron or else it has lost an electron. Most of the common inorganic polyatomic ions have negative charges. This means the ion has more electrons than the neutral atoms that are in the ion. A polyatomic ion like phosphate, PO43- has three extra electrons beyond the electrons on the P and O atoms. The extra electrons are shared by all the atoms in the polyatomic ion. These electrons are sort of smeared around the atoms in the ion. If you count up the valence electrons in the phosphate ion you will see there are 32 electrons. The neutral P and O atoms originally had only 29 valence electrons. The negative charge is due to the extra three electrons that came from some outside source like metal atoms that formed cations. The charge is written outside the brackets to indicate the charge is spread on the ion as a whole.

A listing is available at the Dovada reference library..
http://www.dovada.com/chemical_data.htm

Thanks Admin