Ionic compounds are polar. Covalent bonds may be completely covalent or they may have some ionic character. Those we call polar covalent. Some prefer to label compounds as ionic or polar covalent and call covalent compounds as polar or non-polar. Here is a site, not a particularly good one because it talks about so much more than polar/non-polar, but scroll down about 5/6 or 3/4 of the way to the polar/non-polar section and you will see what I'm talking about.
http://www.elmhurst.edu/~chm/onlcourse/chm110/outlines/topic3.html
What is the difference between ionic compounds and polar compounds?
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Ionic compounds consist of positively or negatively charged atoms (like Na+ or Cl-) or ionic molecular groups like NH4+ and NO3-, that are joined together by electrostatic attraction. In a polar compound, electrons are shared between atoms in the molecule, but they are not completely transferred from one atom to another.
I'll keep it simple. An Ionic Compound is a compound made up of bunch of positive and negative ions that are so that the numbers of positive and negative charges are equal. As in Polar Compound the numbers of the positive and negative charge is not equal. They don't share electrons equally as ionic compounds.
1 answer