In this section, the nature of an ionic bond will be explained and compared to the natures of covalent and metallic bonds. We will discuss how to use the relative electronegativities of two atoms to determine whether they will join in an ionic bond or not and how their electron affinities and ionization energies determine how much energy is required to create the bond. Coulomb's Law will be introduced to describe how the strength of various ionic bonds can be compared, and we will cover how ionic bonds behave in different environments. Finally, we will cover the naming of ionically bonded molecules and mention a few polyatomic ions that are covalently bonded but interact in ionic bonds.