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Reactions of The Group 2 Elements With Air or Oxygen
Reactions of The Group 2 Elements With Air or Oxygen
This page looks at the reactions of the Group 2 elements - beryllium, magnesium,
calcium, strontium and barium - with air or oxygen. It explains why it is
difficult to observe many tidy patterns.
The Facts
On the whole, the metals burn in oxygen to form a simple metal oxide.
"X" in the equation can represent any of the metals in the Group.
It is almost impossible to find any trend in the way the metals react with
oxygen. It would be quite untrue to say that they burn more vigorously as you go
down the Group.
To be able to make any sensible comparison, you would have to have pieces of
metal which were all equally free of oxide coating, with exactly the same
surface area and shape, exactly the same flow of oxygen around them, and heated
to exactly the same extent to get them started. It can't be done!
Note: One of the UK Exam Boards (OCR) implies in their syllabus that you should
be able to state a trend and then explain it in terms of ionisation energy
differences. You can do this with the reactions with water (or steam), and you
might like to follow this link if you haven't already been there. Trying to
account for a non-existent trend in the reactions with oxygen is just silly!
What the metals look like when they burn is a bit problematical!
Calcium is quite reluctant to start burning, but then bursts dramatically into
flame, burning with an intense white flame with a tinge of red at the end.
Strontium: I have only seen this burn on video. It is also reluctant to start
burning, but then burns with an intense almost white flame with red tinges
especially around the outside.
Barium: I have also only seen this burn on video, and although the accompanying
description talked about a pale green flame, the flame appeared to be white with
some pale green tinges.
video 1
video 2
video 3
You might possibly be able to imagine a trace of very pale greenish colour
surrounding the white flame in the third video, but to my eye, they all count as
a white flame. Anything else that I could find in a short clip from YouTube
involved a flame test for a barium compound, irrespective of how it was
described in the video.
Formation of peroxides
Strontium and barium will also react with oxygen to form strontium or barium
peroxide.
Strontium forms this if it is heated in oxygen under high pressures, but barium
forms barium peroxide just on normal heating in oxygen. Mixtures of barium oxide
and barium peroxide will be produced.
The reactions of the Group 2 metals with air rather than oxygen is complicated
by the fact that they all react with nitrogen to produce nitrides. In each case,
you will get a mixture of the metal oxide and the metal nitride.
The familiar white ash you get when you burn magnesium ribbon in air is a
mixture of magnesium oxide and magnesium nitride (despite what you might have
been told when you were first learning Chemistry!).
The Explanations
There are no simple patterns. It would be tempting to say that the reactions get
more vigorous as you go down the Group, but it isn't true.
The overall amount of heat evolved when one mole of oxide is produced from the
metal and oxygen shows no simple pattern:
If anything, there is a slight tendency for the amount of heat evolved to get
less as you go down the Group.
But how reactive a metal seems to be depends on how fast the reaction happens -
not the overall amount of heat evolved. The speed is controlled by factors like
the presence of surface coatings on the metal and the size of the activation
energy.
You could argue that the activation energy will fall as you go down the Group
and that will make the reaction go faster. The activation energy will fall
because the ionisation energies of the metals fall.
Note: This has been argued through in detail on the page about the reactions of
these metals with water (or steam). If you need to know about the reactions with
oxygen, you will almost certainly need to know about the reactions with water as
well.
In this case, though, the effect of the fall in the activation energy is masked
by other factors - for example, the presence of existing oxide layers on the
metals, and the impossibility of controlling precisely how much heat you are
supplying to the metal in order to get it to start burning.
Beryllium, magnesium and calcium don't form peroxides when heated in oxygen, but
strontium and barium do. There is an increase in the tendency to form the
peroxide as you go down the Group.
The covalent bond between the two oxygen atoms is relatively weak.
Now imagine bringing a small 2+ ion close to the peroxide ion. Electrons in the
peroxide ion will be strongly attracted towards the positive ion. This is then
well on the way to forming a simple oxide ion if the right-hand oxygen atom (as
drawn below) breaks off.
We say that the positive ion polarises the negative ion. This works best if the
positive ion is small and highly charged - if it has a high charge density.
Note: A high charge density simply means that you have a lot of charge packed
into a small volume.
Ions of the metals at the top of the Group have such a high charge density (because
they are so small) that any peroxide ion near them falls to pieces to give an
oxide and oxygen. As you go down the Group and the positive ions get bigger,
they don't have so much effect on the peroxide ion.
Barium peroxide can form because the barium ion is so large that it doesn't have
such a devastating effect on the peroxide ions as the metals further up the
Group.
Nitrogen is often thought of as being fairly unreactive, and yet all these
metals combine with it to produce nitrides, X3N2, containing X2+ and N3- ions.
Nitrogen is fairly unreactive because of the very large amount of energy needed
to break the triple bond joining the two atoms in the nitrogen molecule, N2.
When something like magnesium nitride forms, you have to supply all the energy
needed to form the magnesium ions as well as breaking the nitrogen-nitrogen
bonds and then forming N3- ions. All of these processes absorb energy.
Energy is evolved when the ions come together to produce the crystal lattice.
This energy is known as lattice energy or lattice enthalpy.
The size of the lattice energy depends on the attractions between the ions. The
lattice energy is greatest if the ions are small and highly charged - the ions
will be close together with very strong attractions. In the whole of Group 2,
the attractions between the 2+ metal ions and the 3- nitride ions are big enough
to produce very high lattice energies.
When the crystal lattices form, so much energy is released that it more than
compensates for the energy needed to produce the various ions in the first place.
The excess energy evolved makes the overall process exothermic.
Lithium is the only metal in Group 1 to form a nitride. Lithium has by far the
smallest ion in the Group, and so lithium nitride has the largest lattice energy
of any possible Group 1 nitride. Only in lithium's case is enough energy
released to compensate for the energy needed to ionise the metal and the
nitrogen - and so produce an exothermic reaction overall.
In all the other cases in Group 1, the overall reaction would be endothermic.
Those reactions don't happen, and the nitrides of sodium and the rest aren't
formed.
If this is the first set of questions you have done, please read the
introductory page before you start. You will need to use the BACK BUTTON on your
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