https://doi.org/10.15255/KUI.2015.012
Published: Kem. Ind. 65 (3-4) (2016) 147−152
Paper reference number: KUI-12/2015
Paper type: Original scientific paper / History of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering
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Theories of the Chemical Bond in Croatian Textbooks

N. Raos

Abstract

There are two basic theories of chemical constitution; the first starts from stoichiometry (“chemical structure”), and the second from the structure of the atom (“physical structure”). In Croatian textbooks, constitution and valence of the elements were not interpreted “physically” until 1947, when the first university and the first high-school textbook with electronic Lewis formulas appeared. The late appearance of “physical structure” in Croatian textbooks – 31 years after Lewis’s first paper on the chemical bond (1916) and 14 years after the publication of his book “Valence and the Structure of Atoms and Molecules” (1923), could be explained by the hypothesis that Croatian authors were not inspired by Lewis’s work, but rather with Pauling’s textbook “The Nature of the Chemical Bond” (1939). The second factor was World War II in Croatia (1941–1945), which delayed innovations in the teaching of chemistry.

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Keywords

history of chemistry, teaching of chemistry, structural formulas, constitution of molecules