107 Stories About Chemistry
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And hydrogen takes up its abode in the seventh group. But not for long. After getting to know its new relation a little better one of the halogens remarks a little disappointedly: "See here, brother. You don't seem to have many electrons in your outer shell, do you? Only one as a matter of fact - like them blokes in group one. Hadn't you better get back to the alkali metals?" See what difficult straits hydrogen is in: there are plenty of rooms but none it can occupy permanently, with full rights. But why? What is the reason for this surprising two-facedness of hydrogen? What makes hydrogen behave so eccentrically? The specific properties of any chemical element become evident when it combines with other elements. It then yields or accepts electrons which either leave its outer shell or enter it. When an element loses all the electrons of its outer shell, the rest of its shells usually remain unchanged. Such is the case with all the elements except hydrogen. When hydrogen parts with its only electron, all that remains is its atomic nucleus. What is left is a proton, this being, as a matter of fact, all the hydrogen atom nucleus consists of. (Actually it does not always consists of only a proton, but we shall come to this important point later.) Hence the chemistry of hydrogen is the only chemistry of its kind, as it were, the chemistry of an elementary particle, the proton. Thus, reactions involving hydrogen proceed under the influence of protons. And that is why hydrogen behaves so inconsistently.
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