Question

How will you distinguish an element is a metal or a non metal ?

Answer 1

metal has the following properties
lusture,ductile,malleable, electric and heat conductivity etc which non metals don't

Answer 2

If an element is a metal it will have enough electrons extra to donate and if it has just a few less than 8 electrons in the outermost shell it will receive electrons to obtain the octet state, and also, non metals are electro-negative, which means they tale electrons