why are salts, such as sodium chloride made of elements found on opposite ends of the periodic table?

Question

a. elements on the far left tend to form positive ions while those on the right tend to form negative ions.
b. elements on opposite ends of the periodic table have similar arrangements of electrons.
c. elements on the far left tend to form negative ions while those on the right tend to form positive ions.
d. elements on opposite ends tend to share a pair of electrons with each other.

Answer 1

Because the periodic table is arranged to show atoms in increasing order of their atomic weight. The bigger the atom, the more electrons it has; the more electrons it has, the more electron shells are filled.

However, unless the elenemt is a noble gas, it will have either more electrons than it needs to complete the outermost electron shell fewer electrons than it needs to complete it's outermost electron shell. Certain stages of completion (numbers of protons, neutrons and electrons all share specific chemical properties, which is why atoms in the same column of the table share similar characteriastics.

Atoms / ions will tend to be attracted to other atoms / ions that have the number of electrons they need, or to ones that need the number of extra they have. Essentially the table is arranged in a way that shows both the similarity of the atoms in "families" and which also helps us guage likely combinations due to the completeness of their outermost electron shells.

Answer 2

A Na+1 Cl-1 = NaCl All Group I elements form +1, all Group VII form -1 so together they will form an ionic bond. B is wrong because opposite ends have complementary arrangements, not similar C is wrong, left Group I is positive, not negative (the opposite of choice A) D is wrong because sharing a pair of electrons is a covalent bond which happens when each element has an equal pull on electrons. Salts have ionic bonds.

Answer 3

My question would be, why are you concerned? It doesn't bother me.

Answer 4

A