Abstract

SALAS-BANUET, Guillermo; RAMIREZ-VIEYRA, José  and  NOGUEZ-AMAYA, Ma. Eugenia. The misunderstood electronegativity -Trilogy: I. Thought in the qualitative electronegativity. Educ. quím [online]. 2011, vol.22, n.1, pp.38-44. ISSN 0187-893X.

Electronegativity (X) is one of the important basic concepts in chemistry, and it has a centennial history. It represents the enormous experimental and intellectual efforts of many compromised people that derivates in qualitative scales. Presenting the essential aspects of this history allows us to appreciate how the thought around X has evolved, and to recognize that history has a nonlinear evolution. It is possible to observe how these sufficiently understood antecedents were used by Linus Pauling as an intellectual foundation to settle his proposal and his ingenious way to fix a quantitative X scale.

Keywords : electronegativity; electroaffinity; history; atomic properties; bonding.