Four students presented different analogies to describe the formation of an ionic bond.

Student A: Two countries using a common waterway for navigation

Student B: A small dog and a big dog tugging at a bone with equal strength

Student C: Two neighbors carpooling to work

Student D: Assets of a small company being taken over by a large company

Which student presented a correct analogy?

The correct student would be student D since an ionic bond is made up of a metal and nonmetal where metals usually give electrons and nonmetals take.

Answer is: Student D: Assets of a small company being taken over by a large company.

Ionic bond is the electrostatic attraction between oppositely charged ions (cations and anions).

For example, compound magnesium chloride (MgCl₂) has ionic bond.

In this example, chlorine is large company, because it has greater electronegativity than magnesium (small company) and take electrons (assets) from it.

Magnesium (Mg) transfers two electrons, became positive cation, to chlorine (Cl), which became negative anion.

Magnesium is metal from group 2 and chlorine is nonmetal from group 17 of the Periodic table.

Electronegativity (χ) is a property that describes the tendency of an atom to attract a shared pair of electrons.