these two nuclei and it's given here in picometers
picometers
and then on the y-axis we've got the
energy and that's given in
in joules um we did have to choose
scientists had to choose a a zero point
a reference
point and so what we had to do was pick
basically the spot where um we're gonna
say that these these nuclei are so far
apart they're essentially infinitely far apart
apart
that is the point where the attractive
force between them is zero and the
energy of the system is uh
zero um and the reason we did that is
because we had to pick a reference state
that's the same for everything
and where there is no interaction is the
only point that it's the same for everything
everything
uh so that just means that all of our
energies are going to be
the ones that we're interested here are
going to be negative so it's a little
bit unfortunate but it's just how that works
works
all right so what this diagram shows is how
how
as these atoms get closer and closer
together the
energy of the system changes so as we see
see
when the atoms approach each other and
they begin to
interact the energy decreases so what's
going on here is that
remember that electron density or the the
the
volume of space around the atom around
the protons
around the nucleus that we tend to think
that electrons are occupying is actually
a distribu
a distribution of probabilities so what
we think is they're probably in this
volume most of the time but sometimes
they're not
as these volumes get closer and closer
together there's a greater and greater
chance that in fact
the electron from this nucleus or this
sorry this atom is going to be spending
time around this atom and it'll be
interacting with that nucleus
that's an additional attractive force
that that electron can experience
and that lowers the electron so the
um the energy very slowly goes down
and then we get to a point where
essentially the s orbitals overlap
so when the s orbitals begin to um
when the s orbitals begin to overlap
what we see is that
now there's actually a much greater
probability that
either one of these electrons could be
spending time around the other
nucleus at any given moment and that's
going to start to really drop
our energy down the more overlap we have
the more likely it is that
that these electrons are experiencing
these additional attractive forces so
they're they're experiencing
attractive forces between their own
nucleus and now the additional one
in other words they're beginning to be
shared and those additional attractive
forces decrease
the energy of the system and so
eventually we get down here
to where we see this minimum what
happens at this minimum
is that if we tried to force those uh
atoms any closer together or they just
randomly moved closer together the
positive charges in the nucleus
would start to repel each other and the
energy would begin to
increase rapidly this increase
in energy so remember that that the
vast majority of space in an atom is
empty right the the nucleus is
incredibly tiny compared to the volume
that we think of
of the atom but this repulsive force
between the nuclei is essentially why
you can't stick your finger through
tables um it's this repulsion between
the nuclei
in your finger and the nuclei in your in
your table
so that's what's going on this
minimum here if we come back to this
minimum down at the bottom of our what
we call an energy well
is uh is the is represents both the
energy that's released
by the formation of this bond and it
will uh
it represents the distance between the
nuclei that is the um the most stable nuclei
nuclei
uh the the most stable internuclear distance
distance
um for this bond or in other words the
bond length um between two hydrogen
so it's important to keep track of the
changes in energy that accompany
physical changes or chemical changes as
we see here
that's one of the key things that we
look for in chemistry one of the key
things that we do
to sort of help us understand the
changes in the world around us
so this can be a little bit confusing
but essentially as we see with the
formation of this bond and this energy well
well
when we form a bond or when atoms form a bond
bond
to the system or sorry to the
surroundings from the system to the surrounding
surrounding
this is what we call an exothermic process
process
um and exo is uh i think it's i think
it's a latin it might be greek but it's
a latin prefix that just means
exterior right outside so exothermic
just means releasing energy
uh thermic to the outside if you
break a bond that
um from the surroundings
and that is what we call an endothermic process
process endothermic
so you can think about this with um as
we see
when the when the atoms move close
together and then they form a bond
um the energy decreases and and that
essentially tells us that the energy is
being released to the surroundings
if we wanted to then break that bond and
return these atoms to their unbonded
state we would have to put in enough energy
energy
to uh to get the atoms out of this
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