Determine the oxidation number of sulfur in each of the following substances: (f) Which region(s) of the periodic table contains elements that can adopt both positive and negative oxidation numbers?

Video transcript

Hello everyone in this video, we're trying to determine which part of the pr table has commonly known positive oxidation states. So there is a little trick to kind of help us out with this. So one thing to keep in mind. So I just build those asterix is that medals will always have positive oxidation states. And because we know this then we need to find which are our medals. So if you guys recall from learning about the periodic table first in general chemistry, is that This Group one A. And then there's group 2 8. So group one a. Let's put this in a different color. So group 18, that's going to be all of our alkali metals And then group two A. That's going to be our alkaline earth metals. Alright, so as the name includes we have the medals and that is going to be a key player and knowing the oxidation states. So because we know it's positive now, what exactly is that oxidation number? Well, group 18 will always have plus one oxidation states. And then for group two A there's always going to be plus two. So plus one group to A will have plus two. So it's kind of easy to remember just by knowing the group number and then of course we have our transition metals right over here in green. So transition metals even though there is the metal in esteem, there has been it's kind of like a weird region so it has many multiple charges and because it has multiple charges and we don't have a trend to really go along with it, we cannot say it's a commonly known oxidation state. So we will not include this in our answer. As for this column right here, that's going to be our noble gasses, and those are all neutral elements. So the only elements that have a commonly known oxidation state will be all those in Group one A with the plus one oxidation state and their group to a with the plus two oxidation state. And that's going to be our answer for this problem.