Atoms bond together to form compounds because in doing so they attain lower energies than they possess as individual atoms. A quantity of energy, equal to the difference between the energies of the bonded atoms and the energies of the separated atoms, is released, usually as heat. That is, the bonded atoms have a lower energy than the individual atoms do. When atoms combine to make a compound, energy is always given off, and the compound has a lower overall energy.
When a chemical reaction occurs, molecular bonds are broken and other bonds are formed to make different molecules. For example, the bonds of two water molecules are broken to form hydrogen and oxygen.
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Energy is always required to break a bond, which is known as bond energy. While the concept may seem simple, bond energy serves a very important purpose in describing the structure and characteristics of a molecule. It can be used to determine which Lewis Dot Structure is most suitable when there are multiple Lewis Dot Structures.
Energy is always required to break a bond. Energy is released when a bond is made.
Although each molecule has its own characteristic bond energy, some generalizations are possible. For example, although the exact value of a C–H bond energy depends on the particular molecule, all C–H bonds have a bond energy of roughly the same value because they are all C–H bonds. It takes roughly 100 kcal of energy to break 1 mol of C–H bonds, so we speak of the bond energy of a C–H bond as being about 100 kcal/mol. A C–C bond has an approximate bond energy of 80 kcal/mol, while a C=C has a bond energy of about 145 kcal/mol. We can calculate a more general bond energy by finding the average of the bond energies of a specific bond in different molecules to get the average bond energy.
Table 1: Average Bond Energies (kJ/mol)
Single Bonds Multiple Bonds
H—H
432
N—H
391
I—I
149
C = C
614
H—F
565
N—N
160
I—Cl
208
C ≡ C
839
H—Cl
427
N—F
272
I—Br
175
O = O
495
H—Br
363
N—Cl
200
C = O*
745
H—I
295
N—Br
243
S—H
347
C ≡ O
1072
N—O
201
S—F
327
N = O
607
C—H
413
O—H
467
S—Cl
253
N = N
418
C—C
347
O—O
146
S—Br
218
N ≡ N
941
C—N
305
O—F
190
S—S
266
C ≡ N
891
C—O
358
O—Cl
203
C = N
615
C—F
485
O—I
234
Si—Si
340
C—Cl
339
Si—H
393
C—Br
276
F—F
154
Si—C
360
C—I
240
F—Cl
253
Si—O
452
C—S
259
F—Br
237
Cl—Cl
239
Cl—Br
218
Br—Br
193
*C == O(CO2) = 799
When a bond is strong, there is a higher bond energy because it takes more energy to break a strong bond. This correlates with bond order and bond length. When the Bond order is higher, bond length is shorter, and the shorter the bond length means a greater the Bond Energy because of increased electric attraction. In general, the shorter the bond length, the greater the bond energy.
The average bond energies in Table T3 are the averages of bond dissociation energies. For example the average bond energy of O-H in H2O is 464 kJ/mol. This is due to the fact that the H-OH bond requires 498.7 kJ/mol to dissociate, while the O-H bond needs 428 kJ/mol.