How do polarity and electronegativity relate?
1 Answer
Dec 2, 2014
Electronegativity represents how strongly an element will attract electrons to itself. If an element is more electronegative than another it will pull more electrons to itself if it is bonded to that less electronegative atom. This uneven sharing of electrons means that there will be more electrons on one side of the molecule and since electrons are negatively charged this creates a negative charge or "negative pole" on that side of the molecule.
The less electronegative atom would have less electrons now so it would have less negative charge which means more positive charge or "positive dipole."
