The Student Room Group
Uni students - Complete our survey >>
Uni students - Complete our survey >>
Uni students - Complete our survey >>

How do you do this Chemistry question? Ionisation Energy

54BC6F24-B08B-4C03-9BD8-E4F64CA101D7.jpg.jpeg

Q10.
How do you work this out?
B
Mg is group 2 so has 2 electrons in its outer shell (which because it’s furthest from the nucleus requires less energy to remove) so the first 2 ionisation energies aren’t that high. There’s then a “jump” in IE cause you’re removing electrons from a shell closer to the nucleus (so has a stronger nuclear attraction)
(edited 3 years ago)
Original post by Chickenhead11
B
Mg is group 2 so has 2 electrons in its outer shell (which because it’s furthest from the nucleus requires less energy to remove) so the first 2 ionisation energies aren’t that high. There’s then a “jump” in IE cause you’re removing electrons from a shell closer to the nucleus (so has a stronger nuclear attraction)


Ahhh. I was so confused between B C and D because they all have similar patterns. What’s your technique (if you have any) when working these kinds of questions out? I see it now, in B from 2nd to 3rd has a big jump while the others don’t... I hate these questions, confused you a lot
Original post by glorydayes365
Ahhh. I was so confused between B C and D because they all have similar patterns. What’s your technique (if you have any) when working these kinds of questions out? I see it now, in B from 2nd to 3rd has a big jump while the others don’t... I hate these questions, confused you a lot


The steps I follow are
1) find out how many electrons are in its outer shell
2) the successive IE should gradually increase up to that number of electrons
3) you should then see a significant “jump” in the numbers. There then shouldn’t be a significant jump till 8 successive IE’s
(edited 3 years ago)
Basically, it's a formulaic question where students are expected to understand the graph of successive ionisation energies and recognise data from it as a pattern.

It's easy to remove electrons along a period, but there has to be a large jump when one energy shell has had all of its electrons removed and the next one comes from the energy shell (level) closer to the nucleus.

It's a graphical (data) approach to 2,8,8,18

Quick Reply

Related discussions

Latest

Trending

Trending

Articles for you