Fashion Lattice

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Why does salt have a crystal lattice?

When sodium and chlorine combine, one electron transfers from each sodium atom onto each chlorine atom. Explain why the new ions of sodium and chlorine will arrange themselves into an alternating fashion inside a crystal lattice.

The solid has the lowest energy when the opposite polarity ions are as close as they can get and the similarly charged ions as far apart as they can get. For the identically but oppositely charged ions of sodium and chlorine, as close as they can get to each other is the alternating (checkerboard patterned layers) stacked on top of each other so that every ion of one layer is also sandwiched between opposite ions from the layers above and below. Any other arrangement would average a larger spacing between those oppositely charged ions and/or a closer spacing between similarly charged ions.

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Regards,

John Popelish

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