Chemistry Copper Essay PDF

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Essay on the element copper...

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- In studying the resources and writing your text consider the issues raised by the following questions: 1. What are the main components that make up the atom and how are they arranged? 2. How many stable copper isotopes should be described? What are their compositions and abundances? 3. How many electrons are there in the copper atom, and why that particular number? 4. How are the electrons distributed in the shells, subshells, and orbitals of copper? 5. What type of magnetic character do atoms of copper exhibit? - Write a properly formatted essay describing the structure and character of atoms of the element copper. Your essay should be reasonably brief but accurate, and must answer (at least) the questions identified in “Guiding Questions”.

All the matter in our world is made of atoms, basic units of a chemical element. Elements are chemically the simplest substances that contain atoms and they’re structured in an orderly fashion in the periodic table of elements. One of the common elements found in this table is copper. To further understand the structure and character of atoms of the element copper, we first need to understand the basic makeup of an atom – subatomic particles that include the proton, electron, and neutron. Matter is made up of atoms and atoms are made up of even smaller particles such as a proton, electron, and neutron. For starters, an atom is made up of positive nuclei that contains protons and neutrons and it is surrounded by a cloud of electrons. Protons are positively charged particles with a charge of +1 and would deflect towards a negatively charged plate when fired through a cathode ray. The number of protons in an element is its atomic number which is essentially its unique identity (no two elements may have the same atomic number) and in the case of copper, it has 29 protons. Neutrons are particles with neutral charge so when they’re fired through a cathode ray, they would continue travelling in a straight line. As previously mentioned, both protons and neutrons are centralized in the nucleus and when added together, the sum of protons and neutrons is equal to the atomic mass or mass number of that element. No two elements may have the same atomic number but atoms of the same element may differ in the number of neutrons which makes them isotopes of each other. The atomic mass seen on the periodic table is a weighted average: it takes into account the abundance of a particular isotope

and multiplies that by its atomic mass. Copper has two naturally occurring isotopes: 63Cu, with 34 neutrons, and 65Cu, with 36 neutrons. The Scientific Instrument Services state that the abundance of each is 69.17% and 30.83%, respectively, and their exact mass at 62.929599 u and 64.927792u, respectively. Thus, their weighted average, taking into account significant figures, means the atomic mass of Cu is 63.55. As previously mentioned, a copper atom has 29 protons. For a neutral copper atom, there must also be 29 electrons since the proton and electron have the same magnitude of charge but opposite sign (the net charge of an atom must be equal to 0 or it would be considered an ion). Electrons are negatively charged particles with a charge of -1 and would deflect towards a positively charged plate when fired through a cathode ray. Unlike protons and neutrons, electrons are located at a considerable distance away from the nucleus and are found in different energy levels surrounding the nucleus called orbitals. Orbitals are regions where an electron is likely to be found 95% of the time. Essentially, electrons are arranged in a series of shells, subshells, and orbitals. The first shell has one orbital in the s-subshell that will have two electrons in it. The second shell has an s-subshell with one orbital and a p-subshell with three orbitals for a total of four orbitals containing a total of eight electrons. The third shell will have the s- and the psubshells filled with eight electrons as was the case in the second shell. Since the s-subshell of the fourth shell fills before the d-subshell of the third shell, it will contain two electrons. Finally, the third shell will have nine electrons in the d-subshell. No further subshells will contain electrons as all 29 have been placed. Electrons fill the orbitals evenly and according to Hund’s rule, every orbital in a subshell only has one electron before any one orbital is doubly occupied, and all electrons in singly occupied orbitals have the same spin. Also according to the Aufbau principal, electrons will fill the orbitals with lower amounts of energy first. However, Copper is an interesting representation of these principals. Instead of having a configuration of 4s2 3d9 it has a configuration of 4s1 3d10. This is due to the fact that the electrons want to fill the orbitals in order to have the lowest possible energy. Instead of leaving the 3d subshell with an orbital with one single electron, an electron that would normally take up the 4s subshell goes into that orbital to balance out the spins, allowing the atom to remain much more stable. Electron structure can be illustrated through electron configuration, which is described in the order in which the sublevels are filled and a superscript to identify the number of electrons in that sublevel. In the case of

copper, it’d look like this: 1s22s22p63s23p64s13d10. Copper exhibits a specific type of magnetic character. There are two different types of magnetic properties experienced by elements – diamagnetic or paramagnetic. Diamagnetic elements are elements whose orbitals are filled to completion with electrons and the values for the spins of electrons are 0. Diamagnetic elements tend to be repelled in a magnetic field because their electrons interact with each other evenly, canceling each other out, and are less likely to be broken up. Paramagnetic elements are different because their orbitals are not completely filled with electrons. Because paramagnetic elements do not have an electron spin of 0, they tend to be slightly attracted to magnetic fields, due to the fact that their unpaired electrons want to have a spin of 0. Since copper has one unpaired electron, it is a paramagnetic element and as a result, it will be attracted to magnetic fields....