Greetings.

One of the beautiful things about the

periodic table is that the way it is constructed allows us to make
predictions about the reactivity of the different
elements. We know that elements which are in the
same group, which is a column on the periodic table, tend to behave similarly when
it comes to chemical
reactions. In the next two lectures I'll be discussing some trends of the periodic
table, which are called
periodic trends. If you don't have a periodic table readily
available right now, please go ahead and pause the video to either
pull out a hard copy, perhaps from a book or one that you've
printed out, or to find a virtual copy that there's a link to in
the main course page. You're going to either want to have that link open so that
you can toggle back
and forth between the video and the periodic table,
or perhaps you can have it open and even split the screen so
that you can see your periodic table as I go
through the video lecture. You're going to want to have that periodic table
available when the in video
questions come up. So go ahead and take time to make sure you
have one available now. The properties of the elements of the
periodic table move in waves, not unlike the ocean waves that occur as
the water comes ashore. This gives us what's called Periodic Law. The Periodic Law
states that, arranged in
order of their atomic number, the elements exhibit periodicity in their chemical
and
their physical properties. So this is where periodicity is really
important. The same types of trends happen over and
over and it will give us something that looks like
waves if we plot that. Let me show you what I mean by doing an example. So the
easiest thing to do here is to put
atomic number on the x-axis. So I'm going to start with atomic number
one, which is hydrogen of course, and I'm going
increase atomic number as I move to the right so I would go from
hydrogen to helium to lithium to beryllium, to
boron, etc, etc, etc. And then what we want to do is see what
happens to some property on the y-axis. There's a huge number of properties that
can be plotted this way. I can plot ionization energy which you'll
see in this video. I can plot electronegativity which is in
the next video. Let me give you an example of a different
property, one that you might not have to remember, but what
might make sense to you. And that is, let's look at the number of
oxygen atoms that combine with another element in
the common oxide of that element.
What do I mean by that? So, for example, you probably know water
is H2O. So for every two hydrogens there is one
oxygen. So then we can also say well for every one
hydrogen there's a half of a oxygen right? So if I wanted to plot the number of
oxygen's per atom in common oxides of that atom, right. I could make that the
property if I wanted
to. And again I'm going to start with
hydrogen. Hydrogen has one half oxygen per hydrogen
in its common oxide of water. So if I just wanted to put some hash marks
here. Say, I could say,you know, 1, 2, 3,
hydrogen which is atomic number one, we'll just put a one
here. Right, it has a value of a half because of
water. In fact, let me change pen color to make
this a little more interesting. So here's what I'm going to plot with my
green pen. Water. And then, how many oxygens would helium
combine with to make a compound? Well as it turns out, helium doesn't like
to combine with oxygen at all. So if I got to atomic number two, which is
helium, that goes down to zero because helium doesn't react very well
with oxygen. Doesn't react at all. It's a noble gas.
It's inert. And then if I plot along, from helium to
lithium to beryllium to carbon, carbon ends up up here, between two and
three, because of carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, carbonate.
Those three, things all combined. And then I can go to oxygen itself. Now oxygen as
an element we learned was
diatomic, which means one oxygen combines with one
other oxygen. So there is two oxygens in the common
oxide of oxygen that's kind of weird to think about
it that way. So that actually goes down a little bit.
Then it's going to down. Fluorine is low. And then it hits a valley goes back all
the way down to zero for the next noble gas which
is neon. And so, it looks like a wave, doesn't it?
Do you see how it looks like a wave? And then the trend repeats. I get a similar
shaped wave that goes up
to a peak for silicon, goes back down for sulfur, back down for
chlorine, and back down for argon. And then the wave starts to go back up
again, so I'm not going to plot all the way across, but say
calcium, would be right here. And calcium has the atomic number 20
sorry, 20 for calcium. Right?
So I've plotted that far. Up at the top of the peaks I had carbon
and silicon. Down at the bottom, in the valleys, were
helium, neon, argon. Do you see how its wave-like and how the
cycle repeats? I've only shown two repetitions, but
hopefully you get the idea. Now let's remember what was at the peaks
and what was at the valleys and look at the
periodic table. You have your periodic table handy I'm
sure. But on the peaks we had carbon and
silicon, remember? And in the valleys we had helium, neon,
and argon down at zero. Let's look at the periodic table and see how the periodic
table is constructed
to align with this type of trend, this
periodic trend. So here's a lovely version of the periodic
table. It's very colorful. And remember, at the tops of the peaks
were carbon and silicon. Carbon and silicon are in the same group,
aren't they? And down in the valleys, we had helium,
neon, and argon. They're also in the same group aren't
they? So the groups remember are the columns we
have these group numbers numbered this way one
through eighteen. The periods are the rows. So the first period has only two
elements
hydrogen and helium and the second period has eight elements and the third period
has eight and the fourth period has more. Sometimes that number -- 1, 2, 3, 4, 5,
6,
7 -- is referred to as "n." It's called the principal quantum number. We'll talk
about that more when we do
quantum mechanics. But can you see that there's a trend? The elements that were at
the, at the bottom of the valley, here were the noble
gases. And the elements that were at the peak for that particular property of oxide
formation were carbon and silicon. Now carbon and silicon are not at the peak
of every property. We're going to look at some other
properties, okay? But we would expect if there was, for
example, if fluorine was at the peak, at the first peak, we might expect then the
next peak would have chlorine at the top. Right, because that would make sense.
That would be periodic. You see how that works? Alright, the next thing I want to
do is
introduce the first periodic property, that can help us
predict many, many other properties. And before I do that, I want to show you
different ways of representing the energy of an
electron in an atom. So these are different representations. One that we did
before, was to draw
hydrogen like this. Remember this, it's kind of the Bohr model
of a hydrogen atom. Do you remember that? So that's one way we can show hydrogen.
And the energy of the electron increases
as it moves further away from the positive
charge, right? The lowest energy state, we learned from
Coulomb's law last week was for the electron to be close to the
positive charge. So if I wanted to move the electron
farther away from the positive charge that would require me
to put energy in. So let's say there's another spot where
the electron could be. It's not there. Let's say there's another spot where it
could be out here, right? That spot out further away is a higher
energy location of the electron because it would be farther from the
positively charged proton of the nucleus. So energy increases if we want to think
about it graphically. Energy increases, free energy of the
electron is what I'm talking about, increases as the electron moves
away from the positively charged nucleus. Its lowest energy state is to be closer
to
the nucleus and it has a higher energy state if its
farther away from the nucleus. So if I plotted hydrogen a different way, I could
draw free energy as a y-axis,
okay? And then, instead of having this very
simple picture that I drew before, where I had the electron
right in a sphere, right? I could just say, okay, and every time I push a button,
it's making my drawing
disappear. That's kind of annoying. Let's just do it again.
Here's the electron. I'm going to draw a cross section right
here and I'm going to call this piece of the cross section right here,
this line okay? So in the drawing over here on the left
where I have the free energy on the y-axis and I've got this little line,
that's a spot where the electron can be. And it's implied that the proton is
somewhere down here at the bottom. Probably not right at the bottom, because
that wouldn't be very well to scale. It's probably actually below the screen,
but there's a positive charge down here at the bottom. So as the electron, this
spot where it can
be, moves farther away from the nucleus, the energy, its
free energy increases, remember, I said energy is
going up like this. I'm going to show that electron not as an
e minus letter. I'm going to show it as an arrow, okay? So this is the electron
right here. Okay, it can be shown as a double headed
arrow, a single headed arrow. Both of those are ways to show electrons. It can be
pointed down.
That's also okay. So all of these are pictures of an
electron. I can also write e minus to show an
electron. I can just write the word electron. Sometimes people just make it a
negative
sign with a circle around it or even just a negative
sign. All these different ways to show
electrons. But remember in this picture here, the
nucleus is down here. There's positive charge down at the bottom
for hydrogen atom. Okay, and because I have a positive charge,
excuse me I'm going to go back, because I have a positive charge and
a negative charge for the electron, all of these free energies are negative
values. So zero is up here. Here's zero.
Remember that? When we did Coulomb's Law, the energy of attraction between opposite
charges was a
negative number. Remember that equation? Here's the equation with the force. Is the
force of attraction equals k times
q1 times q2 over the dielectric constant
times the distance square. Remember that? So if one of the charges is negative, and
one of the charges is positive, that's
negative saying that's positive. The distance has to be positive, right,
the dielectric constants are all positive. Coulomb's constant is a constant, it's
positive, right? So for an electron and proton in an atom,
all of the free energies are negative. Alright, now let's compare different types
of atoms. We've just been talking about hydrogen. There's hydrogen again remember?
It goes, it's somewhere in the middle
actually it turns out compared to some of the other
atoms. Comparing hydrogen to other atoms in this
graph I want you to think about what's true for
metals. Do you think it's easier or more difficult
for metals to lose their electrons than it is
for hydrogen? You might not have any idea. Let's look at where metals are on this
graph. There's metals on the graph. So metals generally have higher energy
outermost electrons, and I can't emphasize that
enough. Here I'm only looking at the electron
that's the farthest away from the nucleus. So all of the positive charges are down
here. The metals might have three, save for
lithium, and hydrogen only has one, right? Nonmetals, on the other hand, their
outermost electrons, the ones that are the furthest away from the nucleus, they
tend
to be at relatively low energy. So, remember, let me emphasize this again. The
nuclei and positive charge are down
here. There's [UNKNOWN] lithium.
There's hydrogen. We can say here's a nonmetal. Here's helium, right, which has two
protons. Okay?
And the metal's outermost electron is farther away from its nucleus
than hydrogen's is, usually. This is a trend. It's not always completely true, but
this
is the overall trend. Metals usually have higher energy
outermost electrons than hydrogen. And non-metals tend to have lower energy
electrons than their friend and other
non-metal hydrogen. So, let's do an example here. Let's do a comparison. I've been
drawing these pictures of
hydrogen. So here's hydrogen.
Let's draw another picture. I'm going to draw it smaller this time.
Here's hydrogen, here this electron, okay. What does helium look like compared to
that? Let's suppose that this nonmetal here is
helium, for example. Now helium has two electrons not one so we could draw another
electron there if we
wanted to, right? Well helium, if I was going to draw a
picture of what it looked like, a cross-section of
the sphere. You can sort of imagine, if you want to, that the sphere is like
extending out this
way. This is a little cross-section. So, here's the two protons and the nucleus
for helium, right? And it has neutrons also in the nucleus,
but we don't care about them because they don't effect
the energy of the electrons. And then there's two electrons that are in that space
surrounding the
nucleus. So instead of just one there's now two. And I can see from this picture,
if I change this color and I think about these
as being approximate size and it doesn't quite line
up, then helium size looks smaller, so my picture here
isn't very accurate. Let me try drawing it again. Right, really it should be more
like that,
right? It's relatively small compared to hydrogen, so these are the
helium, the blue ones, and the red one here is
hydrogen. What about a metal? What would a metal look like?
Let's look at the lightest metal, lithium. Well, lithium has three protons in the
nucleus. It's atomic number is three. So, if I was going to draw a picture of
lithium, and draw three protons in the nucleus and there are some neutrons there,
but they don't effect the
attraction of the electron to the nucleus, so we'll just
ignore them for now, not draw them in. And then lithium has three electrons. And as
it turns out, two of the electrons
get to be fairly close These are not necessarily drawn to scale, but, two of
the electrons get to be fairly close to the
nucleus. Let's say they're down here. I did not draw them on this graph before
because remember this graph is only for the
outermost electron. And then in a shell that is further away
from the nucleus is the outermost electron of lithium.
Put lithium in a box there. Here's hydrogen. Here's helium. So lithium's outermost
electron if we were
to plot the energy Oops.
Didn't like my color choice there. If we were to plot the energy, then
remember this is the line up here, where the electron
can be. Here it is, right? That's at higher energy than the one is if
I was to take a cross section here, and do
hydrogen which is a higher energy from this little cross
section if I come down here to where I drew it more to scale
of helium. Okay? So why is the lithium one so far away? Because that doesn't
totally make sense,
right? If you think about Coulomb's law, the more
positive charge there is in the nucleus the more attracted to the
nucleus the electrons should be, right? Right? Because the larger that the
numerator
would be of Coulomb's Law. But in this case, in lithium's case, the electron that's
farthest out actually has
two negatively charged electrons between it and the nucleus. So it doesn't feel the
full plus three
charge. Even though there are three protons there,
it's what we say is shielded by the other electrons from the
full pull of the nucleus. In fact, for lithium, you can imagine. Here's this
lithium electron up here to
make it anthropomorphic. This electron up here is trying to look down, and it's
trying to
see the nucleus. But it is actually shielded by these other
two electrons, that make it hard for the outermost electron to feel
the Coulombic attraction to the nucleus. So this electron, instead of experiencing
a nuclear charge of plus three, it experiences what is called an effective
nuclear charge of only 1.3. So the nuclear charge that it's experiencing
is not as great as we would expect just based on the actual nuclear charge and
that's because of this phenomena
called shielding. Okay.
So let's review the general picture. I'm going to go back one and then forward
one. So this is the picture I want you to have
in your mind. This is a trend of the orbital energy. The, the orbital is where the
electron
probably is, okay? And this is a trend that shows is the orbital relative high,
relatively high
energy, like it is for the metals? Or is the orbital at relatively low energy
like it is for the nonmetals, hydrogen being slightly
higher energy than some of the other nonmetals? So hydrogen is kind of in the
middle. This is a great trend to remember, because
when hydrogen reacts with metals it behaves differently than it does
when it reacts with nonmetals. And that comes from the relative energies
of their electrons, which is called the orbital energy. We're really looking at
where are the
electrons. So let's review this trend in the energy
of the outermost electron. Here's a little diagram that shows the
periodic table, roughly. Hydrogen's right here. Hydrogen's right here. Hydrogen is
this one that's kind of shown
as half pink and half yellow, okay. Sometime hydrogen's drawn over here,
remember, above lithium. But in this case it's drawn in the middle,
which is where I like it. Nonmetals are drawn as yellow, metalloids
refer to that white stripe and then metals are
pink. So to summarize the nonmetals have
relatively low energy orbitals, right?
The electrons are closer to the protons of the nucleus.
And the metals have relatively high energy orbitals, okay?
So we have different types of elements and
depending on whether their a metal or a nonmetal
determines how much energy the electron, the
outermost electron has. So metals have some low energy orbitals,
too, those core electrons that are closer to
the nucleus. But if we look at just the outermost
electrons, those are the ones who do the chemistry when two atoms
bump into each other, right? It's the outer ones, the one that's in the
outside shell. Then the metals have relatively high
energy orbitals and the nonmetals have low energy
orbitals. Do you think that it would be easier to
remove the outermost electron from an orbital that's already high
energy, of a metal atom? Or do you think it would be easier to remove an electron
from the lower
energy orbital of a nonmetal atom?
Go ahead and try that out. What do you think? If you had to remove an electron
would it be easier to remove one that's already at
high energy? That would be a metal. Or would it be easier to remove one that's
at low energy, which is a nonmetal?