Question

What is the correlation between atom
ic size and ionization energy

Answer 1

Answer:

Generally, the greater the atomic size, the lesser the (first) IE energy.

When the atom size is larger, it means it has more core electrons and is going down the period. If it has more core electrons, there will be a higher shielding effect for the nuclear charge causing the effective nuclear charge to be smaller, hence allowing IE to have less energy.

However, across the groups, IE will increase as we go down the groups. This si as while they all have the same numbers of core electrons, they have a higher proton number and will result in a greater effective nuclear charge. This is generally true except for group 13 and group 16 elements. For group 13, there is a drop due to the change of subshell to p orbital, while for group 16, due to the electronic arrangement of the electrons, there are some electronic repulsion, hence resulting in a lower IE.

Explanation: