If you have ever studied Chemistry in your life, you might know that there is a group of elements that are known to mankind, which combine to form various types of things.
The Periodic Table and its History
All of these elements are arranged neatly in a specific manner, with a purpose to categorize and classify them easily and scientifically. This arrangement is also known as the Periodic table.
While most of us learn about the current periodic table, what we often do not know is that the road to where we are today with the periodic table was not a piece of a cakewalk. Without the efforts of many scientists like Döbereiner, Newland, Mendeleev, played key roles in building the foundation of the periodic table.
The final periodic table, that we know and study today, is known as the "Long Form of Periodic Table", which was created by Moseley. It is different from other periodic tables as it categorizes elements based on atomic numbers, not atomic masses.
Noble elements in the Modern Periodic Table:
The first noble gas was discovered in 1894 and was named Argon. Subsequently, all the other noble elements were also discovered and were put in a separate group in the periodic table - the 18th group.
The reason all these gases were put in a separate group was because of their queer nature. These gases tended to be very unreactive or did not react at all with other elements in the periodic table.
Why are Noble gases so unreactive?
Now that we know about the periodic table and the special case of the Noble gases, let us finally see why Noble gases behave the way they do.
Each element consists of a core nucleus in which protons and neutrons exist, and a bunch of electrons revolving around the nucleus in fixed orbits.
These orbits can only contain a specific number of electrons in them at a time. For example, the first orbit can only contain 2 electrons, the 2nd orbit can only contain 8 electrons, and so on.
When elements form compounds, they either share or give/take electrons from other elements to complete their octet, as the maximum number of electrons the valence shell (outermost shell) can hold is 8 (with the exception of 2 electrons in the case of the 1st orbit).
The noble gases already have their outermost orbits completely filled, so they do not share or give/take electrons from other elements.
As an example, if a person has his belly full, he would be very reluctant to eat more food, or not eat food at all! The same is the case with Noble gases.
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