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Ch.8 - Periodic Properties of the Elements

Chapter 8, Problem 68

Write orbital diagrams for each ion and determine if the ion is diamagnetic or paramagnetic. a. Cd2+ b. Au+ c. Mo3+ d. Zr2+

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hey everyone in this example, we need to figure out which electron configuration is most correct for a copper two plus ion. We should recognize that copper is located in the transition metal section of our periodic table, which covers the D block. And we should recall that the D block corresponds to our sub level, Where we should recall that the D. Sublevel contains five orbital's Which can hold a maximum of 10 electrons. Our next step is to recognize that the transition metal sections begins At the 3rd energy level. And so to start off our electron configuration, we want to go ahead and find the noble gas that comes before copper on our periodic table. So we want to look for the noble gas that proceeds one B. Because copper is in Group one B on our periodic table. And when we look to our periodic tables, we see that that noble gas would be argon. So we're going to start off our configuration by drawing argon in brackets because we're using a noble gas configuration, which is a more shortcut way of drawing out our electron configuration. Now that we have our noble gas starting off our configuration. Our next step is to write in our lowest energy sub level. And because we see that copper Falls across period four on the periodic table, our lowest energy sub level would be the for us sub level. And we should recall that the 4S Sublevel can hold a maximum of two electrons because it only has one orbital. So we can go ahead and write in for us to our next step is to write in our next energy sub level. Which again would be the p sublevel. But we should recall that r P sublevel for copper will begin in the third energy level. And so we would write in three D. And again we recall that our D. Sublevel can hold a maximum of 10 electrons. However, when we count where copper is on our D block, we would see we fall at three D nine in our D block to land on copper. And so we would go ahead and write in nine in the exponents here too represent our total of nine electrons in our D block. However, we would recognize that this does not honor the principle and we should recall that our principle states that half filled or fully filled sub levels are the most stable. And so therefore we would go ahead and correct this by writing out our configuration with argon still and removing one of our electrons from our lower energy sub level. So we would instead have four s one now where that other electron from our s sub level will go up to the three D sub level. So we would have three D 10. And so this way we are honoring our principle by fully filling in our higher energy sublevel and leaving our lower energy sublevel halfway filled which is the most staple configuration here. Now we want to go ahead and recall that what we've just written out is our electron configuration for the ground state neutral copper atom. So this is the ground state configuration for copper and we do not have a neutral copper atom. We have a copper two plus cat ion, which corresponds to the fact that we lose two electrons. So to correct this electron configuration, we're going to go ahead and remove one electron each from each sub level for a total of two electrons removed from our total configuration. So what we would have is we would get take since we want to lose two electrons. We're going to take -1 electron from our higher energy sub level and we're going to take another minus one electron from our lower energy sub level. And so this would give us our final electron configuration where we have argon in brackets still four S and then three D 9. And so now we can go ahead and simplify this even further so that we just have Argon three D nine since our s sub level has zero electrons in it. And so to complete this example, this would be our electron configuration for a copper two plus ion and this is our final answer. So I hope that everything we reviewed was clear. If you have any questions, please leave them down below and I will see everyone in the next practice video