Nitrogen Family Reactions - Online Tutor, Practice Problems & Exam Prep

The nitrogen family, or group 5A elements, are characterized by having five valence electrons, leading to diverse chemical behaviors among its members, which include nonmetals, metalloids, and metals. These elements can react with halogens to form trihalides and, in some cases, pentahalides—compounds with three and five halogen atoms, respectively. This is due to the ability of elements from period 3 and lower to have expanded octets, allowing for additional bonding. However, nitrogen, being in period 2, cannot form pentahalides. When trihalides and pentahalides interact with water, they produce oxyacids—covalent compounds with hydrogen atoms bonded to an oxyanion. Trihalides yield oxyacids with three oxygen atoms, while pentahalides result in oxyacids with four oxygen atoms, as the maximum number of oxygens observed in oxyacids is four. It's important to note that nitrogen's trihalides do not participate in these reactions. Understanding these reaction patterns is crucial for predicting the behavior of group 5A elements when they encounter halogens and water.

Nitrogen Family Reactions

In this series of videos, we're going to take a look at the elements in Group 5A, otherwise known as the nitrogen family of elements. Now, the reactions in this group are driven by the presence of five valence electrons in their SMP sub shells. Now we're going to cover two types of reactions. We're going to have these Group 5A elements reacting with water or a halogen.

Now for them to react with water, they first need to form what we call hallets. So we're first going to talk about the reaction with halogens. Once we do that, then we're going to talk about the reaction with water. We can see as we're progressing towards the right of the periodic table that we have to pass through groups 1A to 4A before we get to Group 5A.

Group 5A in itself has a lot of diversity in terms of the types of elements present. We have our basically our non-metals in the form of nitrogen and phosphorus. We have our metalloids in the form of arsenic and antimony and then we have our metallic bismuth. Row seven is made-up of synthetic man-made elements, heavy elements. They're very unpredictable so we tend not to pay attention to them when it comes to these different groups.

So we're going to be paying attention to rows 2 to row six. So again, in this series of videos, we're going to take a look at the different types of reactions of our nitrogen family of elements.

Reaction with Halogens

When it comes to the reaction with halogens, we're going to say the nitrogen family elements react with halogens to produce trihalids and pentahalids. Now recall nonmetals from periods 3 or lower, so periods 3 and lower can have expanded octets. So if we're looking at this periods 3 and lower, well, nitrogen is in. 2 So nitrogen can't form A pentahalid can't have an expanded octet.

Also, we said nonmetals bismuth is metallic, so bismuth would not be included. Arsenic and antimony are metalloid, so they have nonmetal characteristics with them, so they can fit under this idea of having expanded octets. Now here, if we take a look at reactions with halogens, we have E here, which represents basically anything within that group, and here it's reacting with a diatomic element. So here we're going to say that E reacts with X₂. It'll create EX₃.

We need to balance this out. So we put a three here and A₂ here and we have to put a 2 here. In this way, we've just created a Tri halid. We have our group 5A element and we have 3 halogens with it. So this is our Tri halid. This Tri halid, if it wanted, could continue onward and react with another mole of diatomic halogen. And it's here that those two additional halogens could be combined with this structure to give us our pentahalid here. It's already balanced, just coefficients of one across.

So what do we take from this example? Well, what we take from this is that we start out with two moles of our group 5/8 element reacting with three moles of our diatomic halogen in order to create our Tri halid. And then that Tri halid, if it want it could react with a fourth mole of our diatomic halogen to create this pentahalid. So All in all, it takes about a total of 4 moles of diatomic halogens to take a group 5/8 element all the way to a penta halid. So just look at these patterns and remember them in the creation of trihalids and pentahalids.

Nitrogen Family Reactions Example

Here it says determine the product formed in the following reaction. We have two moles of nitrogen solid reacting with three moles of diatomic fluorine. We know that we're reacting 2 moles of our group 5/8 element with three moles of diatomic halogen. The end result should be a Tri Halid, so we should create NF₃.

We still have to balance this. We have two nitrogens on this side but only one here, so I put a 2 here. Doing that would also balance out my fluorines because two and three gives me 6 fluorines on the product side and we already have 6 fluorines on the reactant side.

So this would be represent the formation of nitrogen Tri fluoride or trihalid that have been formed from the reaction of two moles of our group 5A element with three moles of our diatomic halogen.

Reaction with H2O

So at this point, we've talked about the creation of trihalant and pentahalids when beginning with our Group 5A element. Once we've created those halids, we can then react them with water. We can say here the trihalads and pentahalids can react with water to form what we call oxy acids. Now recall we've talked about oxy acids in the past. Oxy acids themselves are covalent compounds containing a hydrogen atom bonded to an oxy anion. Now the exception here is that the trihalogens of nitrogen are not involved in these reactions.

All right, so here we have two example reactions. We have our trihalid and our pentahalid both reacting with water. We can say here that our try how it reacts with water. And a good way to remember the type of oxyacid form is that trihalites 3 halogens create oxy acids with three oxygens. So here we'd have H3EO3. So again, triholids 3 halogens create Oxy acids with three oxygens as a by product. We'd also create a hydrogen pallet as a by product and then if we wanted to balance this out, that would be 1313.

Now Pentahal is reacting with water. Well, here a Pentahal, it has five halogens, but oxy acids don't go up to five oxygens, We have to go down one. The highest number of oxygens that we've seen with Oxy acids is 4. So we're going to say Pentahal, let's create Oxy acids now with five oxygens but with four. So here we'd have H3EO4. Again, we'd make a hydrogen Halid as a byproduct, balancing this out. This would be 1415.

The most important thing here is to remember that trihalids create oxyacids with three oxygens. Pentahal it's create oxy acids with four oxygens. Again, 3 oxygens gives us 3 halogens gives us 3 oxygens. 5 halogens can't give us 5 oxygens because we can't go up that high. So go down one, they create 4 oxygens. Remember that to help guide you to the type of oxy acids that are created.

Nitrogen Family Reactions Example

Here it says complete and balance the following reaction. So here we have arsenic with three flooring, so we have a trihalet. Trihalids make oxy acids, 3 halogens make 3 oxygens. For oxyhalid it would be H₃.

Arsenics are group 5A, element O₃ and then we'd have our hydrogen halid, so that'd be H with the flooring balancing it out. This would be aqueous, Aqueous. We balance this out. We put a three here, We put A1 here. We already have a three here and A1 here, so now our equation is balanced.

So again, try halids 3 halogens. Create oxy acids with three oxygens.

Provide the products from the reaction between 2 moles of antimony with four moles of chlorine.

2 Sb(s) + 4 Cl₂ → 

• A. SbCl₃
• B. Sb₂Cl₃
• C. SbCl₅
• D. SbCl₄

Name the oxyacid created from the reaction between phosphorus trichloride and 3 moles of water.

• A. hydrophorous acid
• B. phoric acid
• C. phosphorous acid
• D. phosphoric acid