ionic Compounds Are Brittle! So Britware!
I know why you're here. First you have to and second, you probably want to know why they are brittle. Well in ionic compounds there are cations and anions. Cations are positively charged and anions are negatively charged. We know that opposites attract( if you didn't know, opposites attract i.e positive to negative and negative to positive) so when a force makes contact with the compound, the ions rearrange itself so when the cation hits another cations, a strong repulsion between the two causes the solid to break. It breaks because opposites attract and same charges repulse against each other.