Periodic Trends

Periodic Table Trends When you think of a periodic table, you think of elements like oxygen, neon, lead, and iron. You may even think of numbers, rows, and columns. You may not think about trends that are happening throughout a periodic table. There are many different trends that go on in a periodic table. The trends that I am going to be describing throughout this paper are atomic mass, atomic radius, first ionization energy, and electronegativity. When you study a normal/ordinary periodic table, the atomic mass will usually get bigger when going left to right and it will also get bigger when you go top to bottom. The atomic mass gets bigger left to right and top to bottom because the protons, electrons, and neutrons are increasing making the mass get bigger as you movie along the periodic table. When you look at the trends of the atomic radius, you will notice as you go left to right, the radius gets smaller and when you go top to bottom the radius gets bigger. The radius gets bigger going top to bottom because more energy levels are becoming occupied by electrons. The radius gets smaller going left to right because you are adding more protons which pulls the electrons and it makes it become unbalanced. If you look at the trends of the first ionization energy trends on a periodic table, you will notice that as you go left to right it gets bigger, and as you go top to bottom it gets smaller. This happens because as you go to the right, you gain more protons increasing the magnetic pull making it harder to lose electrons. As you go top to bottom it gets smaller because as you go down, the electrons are farther away from the nucleus, which requires less energy than an element that has electrons closer to the nucleus. For example, Li is smaller than Cs. So if you try to take an electron from Li it will require more energy because this atom is smaller and the electrons are closer to the nucleus. When you look at a periodic table you will notice the trends of electronegativity. As you go you left to right, the electronegativity gets bigger, but when you go top to bottom it gets smaller. This trend happens because as you move right the atoms have a tendency to gain electrons in order to become more stable. It gets smaller going top to bottom because you lose energy levels putting the protons out on the outer edge and making it easier to gain electrons. Personally, I think that the periodic table that we use daily is easier to use because it makes sense, and it is organized in a neat manner. It also makes sense to me when I look at it. But, when I look at the alternative periodic table, it seems to have a few things that I like, but the way that it is organized does not really make sense to me. One way that the alternative periodic table is superior to the normal periodic table that we use daily is that it has all the sublevels in an order that is easier to understand and it also shows the way that the elements bond in each different sublevel. It also has the period number which makes it easier to read and find each sublevel and period. Two ways that the alternative periodic table is worse than the normal periodic table is that the numbers aren’t in corresponding order, they are just scattered all over the place and it is harder to see the trends because the organization is not proper compared to the organization of the normal periodic table. Also, the alternative one does not show the atomic mass for each element.