Question #49b16

1 Answer
Ernest Z.
Jun 26, 2017

Here's my explanation.

Explanation:

#"NaCl"# has a cubic unit cell.

You can think of it as a face-centered cubic array of chloride ions with an interpenetrating sodium ion lattice.

NaCl
(Adapted from wps.prenhall.com)

In the above diagram, there is a chloride atom at each corner and a sodium on in the centre of each edge.

The distance from the centre of a #"Cl"^"-"# ion to the centre of an #"Na"^"+"# ion takes us to the centre of an edge.

Thus, if the distance between the ions is X pm, the edge length is 2X pm.

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