Core Charge Lab Report

As said above the reactivity of metals when moving across the periodic table the reactivity decreases and when moving down a group the reactivity increases. This is caused by relationship between the core charge and valence electrons. When moving across a period each element will have the same number of shells, but each of their core charges are going to be different. The core charges become higher the farther across the period you move. An increase of core charge, means a decrease in shells making it harder to pull electrons away because they are closer to the nucleus, which causes for there to be a great attraction between the nucleus and electrons. When looking at moving down a group you will see that there is a similar core charge, but the amount of inner electrons gets bigger, meaning there is a greater amount of shells. When
While conducting our experiment, we observed that potassium had a porminant reaction when it reacted with water, than the reaction of sodium with water. When looking at the core charge of sodium and potassium we see that their core charge is the same +1. Even though they have the same core charge, sodium has only three shells, and potassium has four shells, which means that potassium has more inner electrons, and its distance is greater. Due to potassium having more inner electrons causes for the attraction of its valence electrons to be weaker than sodium. With what we know of potassium, when it reacts with water it will have greater reactivity compared to sodium because it is easier for potassium to lose electrons than it is for sodium. This is showing when moving across a period the reactivity decreases. The next reaction that was tested was aluminum in HCl, with a large amount of aluminum added in the HCl solution we saw no reaction. We then compared that reaction of aluminum to the reaction of magnesium in HCl, this reaction showed greater results of