Ionisation Energies & Shell Structure

What happens if you have the successive ionisation energies of an element?

You can work out the number of electrons in each shell of the atom and which element the group is in.

What provides evidence for the shell structure of atoms?

A graph of successive ionisation energies

What happens within each shell?

Successive ionisation energies increase

Why do successive ionisation energies increase within each shell?

Electrons are being removed from an increasingly positive ion, there's less repulsion amongst the remaining electrons, so more energy's needed to remove the next electron.

When do the big jumps in ionisation energy happen?

When a new shell is broken into, an electron is being removed from a shell closer to the nucleus.

What can the graph tell you?

Which group of the periodic table an element belongs to

How can you find out which group an element belongs to from the graph?

Count how many electrons are removed from the first big jump to find the group number.

What can these graphs be used to do?

Predict the electronic structure of an element

How can you predict the electronic structure of an element?

Working from right to left of the graph, count how many points there are before each big jump to find out how many electrons are in each shell.