Today I was teaching my grade 10s the concept of covalent bonding in molecules. I had just made the point that two hydrogen atoms will share their electron with each other so in effect they will each have two. I went on further to state that because each atom's electronegativity (their ability to hold on to electrons) is equal to the other each atom will hold on equally strong to both electrons.
One student piped up with this interesting analogy:
Student: "So the hydrogen atoms would be like the parents and the two valence electrons would be their children."
Me: "That is a great analogy! The only difference being that the children aren't orbiting the parents at the speed of light."
That was met a little bit of pity laugher. I REALLY need to this on one of my colleagues.
*Edit: Tried it on one of them. Fell flat. Boo! I thought it was clever.
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