Recently, I received an e-mail about a product called Snatoms. No, this is not a new low calorie snack made out of atoms, but a clever molecular modeling kit.
While listening to one of the Snatom YouTube videos, it was mentioned that atomic bonds do not “store” energy. Since this was how I was taught, and has served me well through 40 plus years of being a chemical engineer and high school physics and chemistry teacher, I wondered what was going on.
Poking around on the Internet, I found a number of sites with posts that talked about chemical bond energies. At least one article commented that:
Why do chemical bonds appear to “store” energy? They certainly “contain” energy, but energy must be added to get any energy out.
Here is the full article.
So, my question is, is there really a difference between saying that chemical bonds “store” or that they “contain” energy. Or is this just a game of semantics?
Your opinion would be appreciated.
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