bonds and structures

[205783236]

hi!
I was wondering if we could tell the difference between ionic bonds and covalent bonds based on the structure of lewis sturctures and if yes how?

[Rhea Desai 1A]

Usually we use lewis structures to show covalent bonds. If the Lewis structure has nonmetal bonding, then it's a covalent bond. Ionic bonds involve a metal and nonmetal, so if the Lewis structure has these elements then it's likely an ionic bond. Ionic bonds also involve gaining/losing an electron fully to another compound which can be seen if we draw the lewis structure.

[amara ajon 1d]

Hi,
Usually, when trying to determine if something is ionic/covalently bonded, it's best to look at whether we have a metal and nonmetal or two nonmetals within a compound — this will usually tell you if we have an ionic or covalent compound.
As for Lewis structures, ionic compounds (ideally) have one atom giving up its electrons and another accepting them, leading to charges on both of the atoms/molecules. This means that we can tell an ionic Lewis structure based on whether they have charges attached or not. There usually aren't any bond lines drawn for ionic compounds since atoms aren't sharing electrons necessarily.
With covalent compounds, there will be single/double/triple lines drawn in Lewis structures to represent shared electrons so we can tell those apart usually.

[William Huang 1K]

In lecture he gave the example of KCl where it showed a K+ ion next to a Cl with a full octet in brackets and the "-" sign to the right of it, so you should see the + - signs indicating where the ions are if it's an ionic compound.

[Jordan Kaplan 2E]

Lewis structures just demonstrate the bonds between different molecules. There aren't different structures based on the types of bonds(whether ionic or covalent) so you would have to look at the elements involved.