Question

Really confused by polar and non polar

Answer 1

A nonpolar covalent bond usually occurs between dipole molecules, like O2. If the electronegativity difference between 2 atoms is less than 0.5 I believe, the bond is nonpolar covalent. If the difference is between 0.5 and 1.5 or something, then the bond is polar covalent.

Answer 2

Have you ever seen a magnet labelled North and South? Those are called the north and south pole. Having poles just means that it has opposite ends, and a polar molecule has a Positive and Negative end.

Nonpolar of course means it doesn't have poles. So it is fairly neutrally charged everywhere. Your chair is a good example of something that's nonpolar. You can get up off of it without it sticking to you!

Water is a very polar molecule, it looks like this: the little squiggly d is a delta and next to that is + or - and all that means is partial positive and partial negative charge. So the positive part of water (the hydrogen atoms) stick to the negative part of water (oxygen atoms) very similar to how the north pole of a magnet sticks to the south pole of a magnet. Similarly, south poles push south poles away and north poles push north poles away like positive repels positive and negative repels negative charges.