It says that all metals form positive ions in a reaction but it doesn’t make sense for me considering there are metals in group 5 and 6 which means they would have to gain electrons making the ion negatively charged. Then how come all metals are form positive ions… Someone please explain..
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How the actual fuck is this an eli5 question? You might as well ask about the intricacies of the large hadron collider and how it discovered the Higgs boson with all the math involved as well, explained to a five year old
Metals usually form positive ions because metals are very “electropositive”. That means that the outer electrons of each atom of a metal are very loosely bound to the atom’s nucleus. So, when electronegative atoms (atoms which tend to suck-in electrons) react with metal atoms, they tend to form ionic compounds consisting of anions (negative ions) of the electronegative element, and cations (positive ions) of the metal. For example, when 100 atoms of Chlorine gas come into contact with 100 atoms of sodium metal, they form NaCl (table salt) consisting of 100 Na+ cations and 100 Cl- anions.
Groups 5 and 6 are not Metals, they’re Transition Metals. That’s a pedantic distinction, as they both share very similar properties, but the transition metals act slightly differently because of which type of electron shell the valence shell is. Metals do give up an electron due to the outer most electron shell (s-shell) being incomplete and the electrons in that shell are weakly held. The transition metals vary in how strongly they hold on to their valence electrons (d-shell), meaning they can be negatively and positively ionized depending on which element it is.
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