eli5 Why are Ionic Compounds not considered molecules?
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As others have noted, this is difficult to explain while keeping it simple enough for ELI5. However, let’s consider the ion everyone is most familiar with, table salt (NaCl). The thing that makes an ion an ion is that it both the sodium (Na) and the chroride (CL) have a different number of electrons than the periodic table shows they have. Sodium ALWAYS has 11 electrons, except when something like chloride steals one. This turns sodium into a +1 ion that has ten electrons, and chlorine (which usually has 17 electrons) now has 18 and has a -1 charge.
This is also true for polyatomic ions such as sulfate (SO4^- 2). Sulfer has 16 electrons usually, while oxygen has 8. So, with 4 oxygen and 1 sulfer, we would expect sulfate to have 48 electrons (8+8+8+8+16), but instead it has 50! Sulfate stole two electrons from another atom (meaning it ionized another atom) to become sulfate.
TL/DR: ions have a number of electrons that differ from the number of electrons indicated by the periodic table.
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