ABSTRACT
Chemistry has a specialised language and symbolism that tends to discourage those outside (even other scientists) from exploring it too deeply. Nevertheless, it plays such a central role in materials that it is important for everyone to be ‘chemically literate’. The matter-wave model which has been so successful in ‘explaining’ the properties of atoms also accounts for chemical bonding and the formation of molecules. Consideration of the atomic models for the chemically unreactive noble gases eventually provided the electronic configuration basis for an understanding of how atoms interact to form molecules by means of chemical bonds. This chapter presents the current conventional bonding classification model for substances, with three types of bonding (ionic, covalent and metallic). Allotropes of an element tend to differ in the extent of their metallic nature. Metallo-carbohedrenes or ‘met-cars’ contain twelve carbon atoms and eight titanium atoms, and other similar molecules are expected.
