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Name: Laura
Status: student
Age: 40s
Location: N/A
Country: N/A
Date: 1999
Question:
How do I tell if an element/compound/ion is a dipole?

Replies:
If you have a compound that has a dipole, and if you put enough of these molecules together, then the collection of them will have properties that we can measure on a large scale. This would be the electrical permitivity. So this is how you could see experimentally how much dipole moment you have.

If you just ask this as a conceptual question, then any compound that can separate + and - charges, say a molecule which likes to have a positive end and an negative end, would have a dipole. For example if something had sort of an acidic end (sort of ++) and a basic end (--). .

Dr. Ross


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