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Ch.5 - Periodicity & Electronic Structure of Atoms

Chapter 5, Problem 121

Order the following atoms according to increasing atomic radius: Rb, Cl, As, K.

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hey everyone in this example, we need to rank the given elements zinc phosphorus and boron in order of increasing atomic radius. So our first step is to call our trend on our periodic tables for atomic radius and we would recall that it's going to be increasing as we go towards the bottom left of our periodic tables. So we should recall the locations for each of our given atoms. Starting off with sync. We should recognize that sink is located in our D block of our transition metal section of our periodic table and lies across period four. Making note of its atomic number. We would recognize that zinc has the atomic number 30. Moving on to our next Adam, we have phosphorus. We should recognize that phosphorus is located in group five a. of our periodic table And lies across period three. So it's higher up on the periodic table in comparison to zinc. And it has atomic # 15. And next we have our last adam given which is boron. When we recall the location for boron on the periodic table, we recognize that it's in group three A. Which lies across period two. And we would recognize that Born has the atomic number five. So to start out our ranking, we want to go in descending order or rather ascending order. So we want to start off with the smallest atomic radius and that's going to correspond to the atom that is the highest on the periodic table and more towards the right since that's opposite of our trend for increasing atomic radius which is towards the left and bottom of our periodic table. So based on our period numbers for each of these atoms, we would recognize that boron has the lowest period number which is period two, meaning it's located higher up on our periodic table because we would recall that period two would begin around here. So because it's in period two, we would recognize that it's higher up corresponding to a smaller atomic radius. So we're going to start out our ranking with boron listed first and we would say that it has a smaller atomic radius in comparison to the next atom in which we want to find would correspond to the group number or rather period number which is one level larger than period to which in this case is going to be period three corresponding to our atom phosphorus. And so we would say that phosphorus because it is lower on the periodic table being in period three, which would be one level above from period to it would therefore have a larger atomic radius than phosphorus or sorry, than boron. So we would list phosphorus second. And to complete our ranking that leaves us with zinc as the largest adam or having the largest atomic radius due to the fact that not only is it lowest on the periodic table because it's in period four, meaning it would be somewhere around here, therefore would have a larger radius compared to phosphorus and boron. And so this would be our final answer here. Sorry about that. This would be our final answer to complete this example. So I hope that everything I went through is clear. If you have any questions, please leave them down below. Otherwise, I will see everyone in the next practice video.