All In The Family Lab

The purpose of the lab “All in the Family” was to compare the reactivity of the halogens Chlorine, Bromine, and iodine by observing the reactions between their elemental forms and their ionic forms. To accomplish this experiment, we first added a squirt of pet ether to two test tubes. Then, we added the same amount of Cl2 to both of the tubes, shook the mixtures, and recorded the color that resided in each mixture as the initial color. After, a squirt of NaBr was added to one test tube, and a squirt of Nal was added to the other in order to view the reaction between both of the Halides with Cl2. Both test tubes were shaken again, and the colors that remained was noted. The same process was repeated 2 seperate times but instead with Br2 and I2 as
Simply, if there was a color change when comparing the initial color of the reactant to the residing color after a Halide was added, then a chemical reaction had occurred. It was found that a reaction happened between Cl2 and both of the Halides it was mixed with, Br2 only had a reaction with one of the Halides it combined with, and I2 had no reactions with any of the Halides it was tested with. So, this meant that the reactivity level of Chlorine was the highest, Bromine was moderately lower than Chlorine, and Iodine had the lowest of them all. Simply, these results can be explained by the concept of electronegativity, which refers to the ability of a certain atom to attract electrons. Since electronegativity depends highly on an atom’s atomic radius in relation to the number of protons present in its nucleus, Chlorine was seen to have the highest reactivity because it had the smallest atomic radius in comparison to how many protons it contains in the nucleus of one atom. Since the radius was smaller, it was able to attract electrons from the positive protons in its nucleus with a higher force, and therefore have a higher reactivity