The Galileo Project

All about covalent compounds! What are the properties of covalent compounds? Covalent compounds have the following properties (keep in mind that these are only general properties, and that there are always exceptions to every rule): 1) Covalent compounds generally have much lower melting and boiling points than ionic compounds. As you may recall, ionic compounds have very high melting and boiling points because it takes a lot of energy for all of the + and - charges which make up the crystal to get pulled apart from each other. Essentially, when we have an ionic compound, we need to break all of the ionic bonds in order to make it melt. On the other hand, when we have covalent compounds we don't need to break any bonds at all. 2) Covalent compounds are soft and squishy (compared to ionic compounds, anyway). The reason for this is similar to the reason that covalent compounds have low melting and boiling points. Think of it like this: Ionic compounds are like giant Lego sculptures.