You discovered a new atom! Wow, everyone at your lab is impressed!! Some are saying you may be nominated for the Nobel Prize in Medicine!!! If this is going to happen, you have to find out as much about the atom as you can, and you don’t have long to do it. The lab was closing for the night and you only had time to find out the following about the atom: The mass is 252 amu, 122 neutrons, it has 130 protons and it is able to give up 2 electrons if need be. Because you are a genius in chemistry, you went home and figured out the rest of its anatomy.
QUESTION.
1) You confirmed this atom to be a metal. Was that a wild guess? After all, it’s a 50-50 toss-up. The atoms are either metals or non-metals. How did you know it was a metal?
2) You said that this atom needed to be placed in group IIA on the periodic table. How did you know this?
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Losing two electrons makes it go in group IIA. Elements in group IIA are metals. And again, I knew this before I walked out the door. No Nobel nomination for me! It's too "elementary." :-)
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