Chemguide: Support for CIE A level Chemistry

28.1: General physical and chemical properties of the first row of transition elements, titanium to copper

Learning outcome 28.1.1

This statement simply asks you for a definition of a transition element, but you also need to know about the electronic structures of the atoms and their ions.

On the previous syllabus that was a separate statement which is missing from this syllabus. You still have to know about this to make sense of everything that follows.

The definition they want is actually in the statement.

The electronic configurations of the metals.

Read the beginning of the page introducing transition metals.

You must be able to write the correct electronic structure for any of these metals in terms of s, p and d notation.

You will have a copy of the Periodic Table in an exam, so you should be able to work these out rather than remember them. You must, of course, remember the oddities - chromium and copper.

Practise doing this until you are confident.

You will find the definition of a transition element at the end of this section.

The electronic configurations of the ions.

We are talking about simple ions here, of the form Xⁿ⁺.

Continue down the introducing transition metals page to read the short bit about transition metal ions. Follow the link at the bottom of that section to look at a few more examples.

Again, you should practise writing these structures until you are confident that you can write them quickly and accurately. Obviously, you aren't going to get these right unless you are sure that you can write the structures for the neutral atoms.

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