Understanding chemistry and its principles enables us to predict and understand various properties of substances. For example, because we know that ionic bonds are very strong and difficult to break, we know that any substance that has these bonds will have a high melting point, because melting is a process that requires the intermolecular bonds present in the solid state to be broken. This can be applied to table salt, sodium chloride, which has an ionic structure and a melting point of almost 800 degrees Celsius. Similarly, many other properties and characteristics may be predicted using concepts of chemistry.