Drag the right hydrogen atom left or right.
Pull it toward the other to form a bond — pull it apart to break it.
Left atomH
Right atomH
StatusSeparate atoms
Keyboard: press Tab to focus the canvas, then use the arrow keys to move the atom (hold Shift for bigger steps).How to use: Each hydrogen atom has one electron in its outer shell.
Hydrogen wants two electrons to be full (like helium). Drag the right atom
toward the left one. When they get close enough, the two electrons move into the
middle and are shared by both atoms. Nothing is lost, nothing is gained —
both atoms now count two electrons. That's a covalent bond. Pull them apart and
the shared pair splits back into two separate atoms.
Notice: unlike ionic bonding, nothing is transferred. Both atoms keep their
own electron, but they pool them into a shared pair in the overlap region.
The shared pair belongs to both atoms at once — so each hydrogen now has a full
outer shell of two electrons. That's why H₂ is stable: it's the same electron
arrangement as helium.