Periodic Trends Reflection

SURPRISE!!! I guessed a lot again. My effort in chemistry has really been lacking, I think it might be because it doesn't interest me. I believe that I could be really good at this stuff, but since I have no interest in it, I lack the motivation to expand my KNOWLEDGE of chemistry.

Periodic trends were easy to remember, but application of those trends is where I fall short. Here they are revisited:

Flame Test Lab

I want to talk about the introduction to this unit, because it was quite interesting, so lets jump back a few days. The Flame Test! Basically, we were tasked with testing different chemical solutions over a Bunsen burner to see what color they burned. It made no sense to me at first, but then I understood once we started talking about wavelengths. We all know the visible light spectrum, ROYGBIV of course, but do we all know the wavelength of those colors? Did we know that wavelength is directly proportional to energy? Let's take a look:

As you can see, violet light has the most energy and the shortest wavelength. I was unaware of this before the flame test lab. Yes, It was cool to see this

but understanding what elements are present in those solutions and the colors they burned reallly helped me draw a line between the element and it's properties.

If you would like to try this lab, be careful and take precautions.

http://www.stevespanglerscience.com/lab/experiments/flame-test/

Electron Affinity and Ionization Energy?

Here I will attempt to break these two concepts into EXTREMELY simple and basic terms.

Electron Affinity: How likely a neutral atom is to gain an electron

http://www.chemguide.co.uk/atoms/properties/eas.html

Ionization Energy: Basically the opposite of electron affinity, this refers to how likely (how much energy it takes) an atom is to release an electron.

http://chemed.chem.purdue.edu/genchem/topicreview/bp/ch7/ie_ea.html

Here is a video on these topics.

Extra Periodic Trends Explanation

If anyone needs help understanding periodic trends, I have found a few websites that help to explain how atoms are characterized on the periodic table.

http://chemwiki.ucdavis.edu/Core/Inorganic_Chemistry/Descriptive_Chemistry/Periodic_Trends_of_Elemental_Properties/Periodic_Trends

https://www.chem.tamu.edu/class/majors/tutorialnotefiles/trends.htm

http://www.sciencegeek.net/Chemistry/taters/Unit2PeriodicTrends.htm

Atomic Radius

Atomic Radius is just what it seems, the radius of an atom of an element. This trend increases as we move from top to bottom and right to left in the periodic table. Therefore, Helium has the smallest atomic radius and then going down a line diagonal and to the left, the radii increase in size.

Periodic Trends Introduction

Periodic trends refers to the general trends of atoms and elements in the periodic table such as size, reacticvity, electronegativity, etc. Below I have a table that basically outlines the important periodic trends and easily shows how they increase or decrease as you move around the periodic table. It seems pretty simple.