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Electron Affinity And Ionization Energy

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Recently in class we have discovered the meaning of electron affinity and ionization energy. We know that ionization energy is the energy required to be absorbed when an ionic bond removes an electron from an atom. We also know that electron affinity is how easily an atom will accept an electron into its shells when trying to make itself neutral. This means that both of these terms play a big role when an atom loses or gains an electron.
The ionization energy is the energy to remove an electron from an atom. A trend for ionization energy is that it generally increases left to right across a row on the periodic table except for the noble gases which have closed shells. For example, lithium requires only 520 kJ/mol to ionize it while helium, the noble gas right next to it in the periodic table, requires 2372 kJ/mol. The ionization energy can be thought of as opposite to the electronegativity of an element in the way that a low ionization energy gives away that an element easily loses electrons to a reaction, while a high electronegativity shows that an element strongly wants to have electrons in a reaction.
The electron affinity is an amount of energy that changes when …show more content…

Electron affinity, on the other hand, describes the energy that is released when an electron binds to an atom. This tells us that since energy is released, the electron affinities will be negative. Another example of the differences between electron affinity and ionization energy is that ionization energy is related with making cations from neutral atoms due to the fact that it measures the amount of energy needed to remove an electron. In contrast, electron affinity is related with making anions due to the fact that it is the amount of energy that changes when a negative ion is formed from an electron being added. These are two big example of how electron affinity and ionization energy are

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