What is the ionic charge on the manganese ion in the ionic compound manganese oxide?
There’s a lot of oversimplification when it comes to high school chemistry and “bonding”. Don’t confuse the oxidation number of an element with an actual ionic charge. In a solid compound there are no ions. Ions only exist in aqueous solution of when the compound melts. Otherwise, the bonds between Mn and O would actually be very polar covalent bonds. That’s because all bonds involve some degree of electron sharing. The electronegativity difference between Mn and O is 1.89, which translates to a bond that has 59 percent ionic character. “Manganese oxide” is a bit vague since there can be several “manganese oxides”. In MnO, the oxidation number of Mn is +2. In Mn2O3, the oxidation number of Mn is +3 and in MnO2, the oxidation number of Mn is +4. You can also have Mn3O4, MnO3 and Mn2O7 where Mn has an oxidation number of +7. Manganese has a number of different oxidation numbers in the metal oxides.
