Question

What is the ionic compound containing beryllium and oxygen?

Answer 1

Hint: Ionic compounds are those in which atoms are bonded to each other through ionic bonds. Here, one atom donates the electrons while another atom accepts those donated electrons. One of the atom elements form cation while other form anion.

Complete answer:
Ionic compounds are those compounds which contain ionic bonds between the atoms. Generally, an element donate or accept the pair of electrons to become stable in nature. A stable element is that whose shells are completely filled with electrons. It is observed that elements which contain valence electrons less than four always donate a pair of electrons. Similarly, the elements which contain more than four valence electrons are expected to accept a pair of electrons. The atomic number of beryllium is $4.$ Therefore it contains four electrons. The electronic configuration can be written as $1{s^2}{\text{, 2}}{{\text{s}}^2}$. We can observe that the second shell is incompletely filled. So it will donate a pair of electrons and become stable. On the other hand if we see the electronic configuration of oxygen, it can be written as $1{s^2}{\text{, 2}}{{\text{s}}^2},{\text{ 2}}{{\text{p}}^4}$. Here $p - $orbital needs two more electrons to get a fully filled stable configuration. Therefore we can say that beryllium will donate a pair of electrons to oxygen and oxygen will accept the donated electrons. Thus both the elements become stable and there is a formation of bond between them which is known as ionic bond. The compound $(BeO)$ will be called an ionic compound.
$2Be{\text{ + }}{{\text{O}}_2}{\text{ }}\xrightarrow{{}}{\text{ 2BeO}}$

Note:
Ionic compounds are polar in nature. This is because during formation one element becomes cation while the other becomes anion. They donate and accept pairs of electrons to become stable in nature. A stable element is that whose shell contains electrons according to the rule of $2{n^2}$.