HCl + NaOH → H2O + NaCl
||As a solid, sodium chloride is crystalline and forms a cubic lattice. The bonding of the sodium and chlorine atoms is one of the classic examples of ionic bonding. In aqueous solution it ionizes to Na+ and Cl- ions and forms an electrically conducting solution.
Ordinary table salt, 50x
|The ionic bonding of NaCl can be visualized in terms of Lewis diagrams. |
When the diameters of sodium and chlorine and their ions are measured, they offer some confirmation of the picture of ionic bonding.
|When sodium loses an electron to form Na+, its effective size decreases to about half. When chlorine gains an electron to produce the octet structure Cl-, its size increases to almost double (Shipman, et al). |
Sodium chloride exists on the earth in great abundance in sea water and is an important part of the fluid electrolytes of humans and other living organisms.
Shipman, Wilson and Todd