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Ch.6 - Ionic Compounds: Periodic Trends and Bonding Theory

Chapter 6, Problem 47

Which element in the transition-metal series Sc through Zn has five unpaired electrons in its +3 ion?

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Hello everyone today. We are being given the falling problem, which element forms a plus six ion with one unpaid electron among the transition metals scanned iem through zinc. So first thing that we want to know is what sort of orbital's are involved with the transition metals. And they're going to be our D orbital's. And it was noted in the question stem that the charge ions are a plus six ion. And so therefore the possible electron configuration will be argon. Since that is a noble gas. Right before we enter the transition metals between scan diem and zinc followed by three D. Because our transition metals start with three D. In equally the number of electrons. And so we can have the following possibility for our three D orbital's. And by the way, D orbital's can hold a maximum of 10 electrons. So we need one unpaid electron. So our horrible diagram can look as such here where we have just this one unpaid electron. So with this, if we use this example, this would be our argon and brackets are noble gas, three D nine. Since there are nine electrons present, Our Argon contributes 18 electrons. And we have nine electrons drawn in here in our Diagram giving us a total of 27 electrons. The number of protons, whenever we have a charged species is equal to the number of electrons plus the charge that we have. And so we have 27 electrons plus our charge which is plus six giving us a total number of 33 protons. The number of protons equals the atomic number and thus the atomic numbers also 33, which gives rise to arsenic and arsenic is not a transition metal. So then we move on to another possibility. And that is if we have our 3D orbital just having a single electron filled in as such writing our noble gas configuration, we have argon three D one since we have one electron. As before. We have 18 electrons coming from the Argon and one lone electron here giving us a total of 19 electrons. As before. The number of protons is equal to the number of electrons plus the charge we are working with in a charged species. The number of electrons we had was 19 Plus our charge was plus six. This gives us a total number of protons of 25 and the number of protons does equal the atomic number. and 25 on the periodic table lines up with manganese, with manganese and manganese is a transition metal. So this is a transition metal routine for short And thus the six plus ion Of Manganese, abbreviated MN, is going to be MN or manganese six plus. And this is going to correspond with answer choice C. And with that we've answered our question overall. I hope that this helped. And until next time