Frederic P Miller

Electronegativity Frederic P Miller

Publisher Marketing: High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Electronegativity, symbol, is a chemical property that describes the ability of an atom (or, more rarely, a functional group) to attract electrons (or electron density) towards itself in a covalent bond. An atom's electronegativity is affected by both its atomic weight and the distance that its valence electrons reside from the charged nucleus. The higher the associated electronegativity number, the more an element or compound attracts electrons towards it. First proposed by Linus Pauling in 1932 as a development of valence bond theory, it has been shown to correlate with a number of other chemical properties. Electronegativity cannot be directly measured and must be calculated from other atomic or molecular properties. Several methods of calculation have been proposed and, although there may be small differences in the numerical values of the electronegativity, all methods show the same periodic trends between elements. The most commonly used method of calculation is that originally proposed by Pauling. This gives a dimensionless quantity, commonly referred to as the Pauling scale, on a relative scale running from 0.7 to 4.0 (hydrogen = 2.2).