If you were to engineer an everyday solution for conserving water which activity do you think would be the most impactful ?
Answer:
Fluorine
General Formulas and Concepts:
<u>Chemistry</u>
- Reading a Periodic Table
- Periodic Trends
- Electronegativity - the tendency for an element to attract an electron to itself
- Z-effective and Coulomb's Law, Forces of Attraction
Explanation:
The Periodic Trend for Electronegativity is up and to the right of the Periodic Table.
Fluorine is Element 9 and has 9 protons. Radium is Element 88 and has 88 protons. Therefore, Radium has a bigger Zeff than Flourine.
However, since Radium is in Period 7 while Fluorine is in Period 2, Radium has more core e⁻ than Fluorine does. This will create a much larger shielding effect, causing Radium's outermost e⁻ to have less FOA between them. Fluorine, since it has less core e⁻, the FOA between the nucleus and outershell e⁻ will be much stronger.
Therefore, Fluorine would attract an electron more than Radium, thus bringing us to the conclusion that Fluorine has a higher electronegativity.
