Monatomic Anions and cations

[Madeleine Farrington 1B]

Section 3.1 of the textbook brings up monatomic anions and cations, but doesn't really define the word "monatomic." Is this any different than a regular anion or cation? What does "moatomic" mean?

[Priscilla Okaiteye]

The textbook is just talking about cations and anions made up of one atom. For example, Na+ is a monoatomic cation and Cl- is a monoatomic anion, because there is only one atom here. When we have covalent bonds acting as one they are polyatomic, more than one ion. They can be ions as well.

[HussainNaib1D]

When we think of ions usually we think of monoatomic ions where an atom of one element transfers or loses an electron to an atom of another element, creating two charged particles. However, there are also compounds that are covalently/ionically bonded that are composed of multiple atoms yet have a singular charge and behave similar to individual ions(these are called polyatomic ions). Because these exist, regular ions in compounds such as NaCl (Na+ and Cl-) are labelled as monoatomic ions.