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

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?

Answer 1

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." :-)

Answer 2

1) To determine whether an atom is a metal or non-metal, we can look at its position on the periodic table. Metals are generally found on the left side of the periodic table, while non-metals are located on the right side. In this case, since you mentioned that the atom has 130 protons and 122 neutrons, we can conclude that it belongs to the element with atomic number 130. By referring to the periodic table, we can identify that the element with atomic number 130 is labeled Bk, which is the symbol for Berkelium.

Berkelium (Bk) is a synthetic radioactive element and is classified as a metal. It falls under the actinide series of elements, specifically in the f-block. So, based on the known characteristics of Berkelium, including its position on the periodic table, we can confidently identify this atom as a metal.

2) Group IIA elements on the periodic table belong to the alkaline earth metals. These elements are found in the second column from the left on the periodic table, right after the alkali metals in Group IA. The elements in Group IIA have two valence electrons and commonly form +2 cations by losing those electrons.

In your case, since you mentioned that the atom can give up 2 electrons if needed, it indicates that this atom's behavior aligns with the characteristics of alkaline earth metals, specifically their tendency to lose two electrons. Hence, we can conclude that the atom you discovered should be placed in Group IIA on the periodic table.