Question

How does the activity of an element different for nonmetals vs metals?
They aren’t different
A. Non-metal activity refers to how easily an element gains electrons. Metal activity refers to how easily an element loses its electrons.
B. Non-metal activity refers to how easily an element loses electrons. Metal activity refers to how easily an element gains its electrons.
C. Non-metal activity refers to how easily an element gains protons. Metal activity refers to how easily an element loses protons.
D. Non-metal activity refers to how easily an element loses protons. Metal activity refers to how easily an element gains protons.

Answer 1

Hint: Metals are a good conductor of electricity. It appears as shiny and ductile. Most of the elements in the periodic table are metals under a different category. Example- Alkali metals, Alkaline earth metals, and Transition metals, etc... Non-metals are poor conductors of electricity. In the modern periodic table, the elements from group-13 to 18 are considered non-metals.

Complete step by step answer:
Generally, the non-metallic character increases from left to right across the periodic table. Metals are highly electropositive. Let us consider an example- Sodium, an Alkali metal. The outer electronic configuration of Sodium is \[3{s^1}\]. Thus, Sodium readily loses one electron rather than accepting electrons. If sodium metal is ready to lose its one electron, then it attains octet configuration. Thus, all metals are electropositive and it tends to lose its electron readily to form a cation.
Let us consider a non-metal element as “Chlorine”. The outermost electronic configuration of chlorine is \[3{s^2}3{p^5}\]. Chlorine only needs one electron to attain octet –stable configurations. So, it mainly focuses on adding one electron to attain an octet configuration instead of removing its valence of five electrons. Thus, non-metals tend to be more electronegative and readily gain an electron to form an anion.
When an element is ready to lose its electron to form a cation, it is also ready to gain the protons since cations contain more protons than an electron. Thus, metals tend to gain protons. This case is the opposite of non-metals. For non-metals, it has more electrons than protons since it is ready to gain electrons.
Therefore, Non-metal activity refers to how easily an element gains electrons. Metal activity refers to how easily an element loses its electrons (Option-B) and also Non-metal activity refers to how easily an element loses protons. Metal activity refers to how easily an element gains protons (E).
Therefore, the correct option is B and E.

Note: Electronegativity is the tendency to attract the shared pair of electrons towards itself. On moving from left to right across the periodic table, electronegativity decreases and fluorine has the highest electronegativity in the periodic table. Electropositive is the tendency to readily lose its electron to form a cation. Alkali metals in the periodic table have the highest electropositive character.