Metal Reaction Lab

Hypothesis: Some metals will be more reactive than other metals, due to their atomic configuration.

Materials: Copper (II) nitrate, magnesium nitrate, zinc nitrate, silver nitrate, copper grains, magnesium ribbon, zinc granules, pipets, and a 24 well plate.

Procedure: First, we added small amounts of copper (II) nitrate, magnesium nitrate, zinc nitrate, and silver nitrate to 3 seperate wells each in the 24 well plate. Thats 3 wells for each mixture. For each of the 3 wells that we gave the separate mixtures, we mixed in one with copper grains, one with a small piece of magnesium ribbon, and one with zinc granules. After each of the metals was mixed with the 3 separate solutions, we waited about 5 minutes to observe any reactions.

Copper on reacted with the silver nitrate; producing a precipitate. All of the other solutions had little to no visible reaction with the copper grains.
Magnesium had almost the opposite effect, which reacted with every solution except for the magnesium nitrate.
Zinc reacted with the copper (II) nitrate and silver nitrate solutions, but not with the zinc nitrate nor the magnesium nitrate.

Conclusion: Our hypothesis was correct to an extent. We were right in the aspect that some metals are more reactive than others. Magneium was very reactive to the solutions while copper (II) was not so very reactive. We didn't specify which metals would react more, but we got our results. In reactivity (from most to least), the metals used ranked magnesium, zinc, then copper (II).

Periodic Table

The periodic table of elements is a way of organizing the chemical elements in periods and groups according to their properties. For example: a highly reactive element can be found on the table next to another highly reactive element. These are called halogens, but we'll get to those later. The periodic table goes from left to right in periods according to the number of protons in the nucleus of an atom of that element. As you move from left to right in a period, the number of protons from element to element increases.
This is all well and good, but what about conductivity or reactivity? Well, as you reach the end of a period, the number of valence electrons (electrons in the outer electron shell of that element's atom" increases.What does this mean? Well, when an atom's outer electron shell is full, that means that is not very reactive. When the outer shell of an atom is filled all the way, it is called a noble gas. These are the least reactive of the elements. Right to the left of those are the halogens, highly reactive elements. They are so reactive due to the fact that their outer electron shells are not filled to the maximum, but by just barely. This means that another element's atom with an electron to fill that gap in the halogen's electron cloud can react with it so easily.