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  Home > JCE Print > Journal of Chemical Education > Issues > 1999  > January  >
In the Classroom
Applications and Analogies
The Gravity of the Situation
Damon Diemente
505 East Seventy-Ninth Street, New York, NY 10021
Cover
January 1999
Vol. 76 No. 1
p. 55
Abstract
Every attraction and repulsion in nature is due to one of the four fundamental forces: gravitation, electromagnetism, the strong nuclear force, or the weak nuclear force. Among these gravitation and electromagnetism are familiar, and students readily recognize their existence and importance. In particular, chemical bonding, involving electrons, nuclei, ions, and dipoles, is clearly dependent on the operation of the electromagnetic force. When discussing chemical bonding, teachers usually make the assumption that electromagnetic forces alone need be considered; gravitational forces are ignored. The reasons for this are not necessarily intuitive. How can we be sure that gravity makes no contribution to chemical bonding? This article presents a few calculations demonstrating that gravitational attraction between atoms is many orders of magnitude weaker than the gravitational attraction between Earth and an atom, and that the gravitational attraction between two ions is many orders of magnitude weaker than the electromagnetic attraction between them. Thus, the customary treatment is justified: gravitational forces are trivially small at the atomic level.
More Information
*  Citation
 Diemente, Damon. J. Chem. Educ. 1999 76 55.
*  Keywords
 Introductory / High School Chemistry; Atomic Properties / Structure; Bonding Theory; Intermolecular Forces
*  History
 Created:
Last Updated:		 June 15, 1999
June 22, 2005
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