**Magnesium**?

Question

for Mg.
the difference between the 2nd and 3rd uibuzation energies is much larger than the difference between the 1st and 2nd ionization energies. Why so?

ion. energies for Mg. : 1st: 7.6 ev
2nd: 14 ev. and 3rd: 80 ev.

(if u notice double to each energy level)
please explain

Answer 1

The more electrons you take away / add to an atom to make it an ion, the harder it becomes to do so.

Trying to take a negatively charged electron away from an overall neutral atom is not that difficult…it does take energy, but as you can see, not all that much. After this electron is removed, the Mg atom is now the Mg+1 ion. Trying to take away a second electron from a now positively charged ion is much more difficult. The negatively charged electron is strongly attracted to the positively charged Mg ion. But with enough energy, the second electron can be taken away and when this is done…something special happens. After two electrons are removed from the Mg atom, it becomes the Mg+2 ion, which has the very same electron configuration as the noble gas, Neon. With this electron configuration, the ion is very stable and it is extremely difficult to remove a 3rd, because of the stable electron configuration.

In nature, Magnesium usually forms a +2 ion, meaning that it looses two electrons. You will almost never find a Magnesium ion which does not have a +2 charge. The first two electrons come off fairly easily, but the third is quite difficult. The more electrons you take away and the closer you come to having a noble gas electron configuration (a filled octet), the higher the ionization energy will be.

http://www.webelements.com/index.html

Answer 2

well, giving up one or two electrons is easy for Mg. It gets closer and closer to what it really wants which is to obtain an octet. Now, once it has that state of "perfection" in the octet, it doesn't want to give away any more electrons. It is happy and peaceful. So the third one is going to be extremely hard to take away. It would leave it less 1 electron from an octet after it worked to get there!

Remember, He and Ar have octets and they are noble! Who wouldn't want to be noble??

Answer 3

An alkaline earth metal.