Predicting Ionic Charges

chapter 7, chem 1211

what can we use electron configurations of ions for?

• predicting their most common charges

When are ions most stabilized?

• when they have a full valence shell (octet)

• or when they have an empty octet

• we can add/take away electrons as we have previously to achieve an ion’s most stabilized electron configuration

When else are ions “happy” besides when they have zero or eight valence electrons?

• when they have half-full sub shells; this will mostly apply to d-block/f-block elements/subshells

• ions can also be fine with having only s electrons and no p electrons

True or false: we can use the different subshell states that ions can have to predict an element’s most common ionic charges based on what electron configurations it can tolerate

true