The Sharing Knife Volume Two: Legacy

Hydrogen, therefore, will be a Gas not made up of separate atoms as is the case with the inert gases, but of two-atom molecules. Something similar will be true in the case of fluorine (electronic distribution 2,7), oxygen (2,6) and nitrogen (2,5). The fluorine atom can contribute an electron and form a shared pool of two electrons with a,neighboring fluorine atom which also contributes an electron. Two oxygen atoms can contribute two electrons apiece to form a shared pool of four electrons, and two nitrogen atoms can contribute three electrons each and form a shared pool of six electrons. I In each case, the atoms will achieve the 2,8 distribution of neon at the cost of forining paired molecules. As a result, enough stability is achieved so that fluorine (F2). oxygen (02), and nitrogen (N2) are all Gases. The oxygen atom can also form a shared pool of two electrons with each of two neighbors, and those two neigh bors can form another shared pool of two electrons among themselves. The result is a combination of three oxygen atoms (O:j), each with a neon configuration ...»