Now, when I look at molecular compounds, I see a couple of differences very quickly.
One, notice I no longer have an array of ions like I did in my ionic compound,
but I have separate molecules in the molecular compound.
These are also called covalent compounds sometimes because they have
covalent bonds.
And in this case, this look, is looking at CH4, this is also known as methane or
natural gas.
And so, if you have gas line in your house for
a stove, a lot of time it's burning natural gas.
And so, that's what we have here.
These molecules, these are methane molecules, and
they exist discretely from one another.
We don't see the array that we saw in our ionic compound.
The other thing we notice when we look at our molecular compounds is the type of
elements that make up these compounds.
I see that carbon is a nonmetal and hydrogen is a nonmetal.
Remember, hydrogen is our odd one out.
Even though it's on the left side of the periodic table, it's really a nonmetal.
And so, I get molecular compounds when two nonmetal atoms, or two or
more nonmetal atoms bond to one another.