How Do Repulsive and Attractive Forces Influence Chemical Bond Formation?

[ChemRookie]

What are some repulsive and attractive forces that would infludence the formation of chemical bonds between two atoms?

 

[Mike H]

Ionic bonding is pretty much all electrostatics.

Covalent bonding is, well, let me quote this:

However, the covalent bond is a purely quantum mechanical phenomenon.

- Michael Fayer, Elements of Quantum Mechanics.

Metals...see above, there's this quote somewhere in one of my books about how metals are well described by the idea of a Fermi surface from quantum physics.

Mind you, you can make up convenient fictions to qualitatively describe chemical bonding (I used to do it all the time when TAing intro university chemistry), but it's only good for a very general, qualitative description.