Nuclear Chemistry

· Chart of elemental abundance: trends and interpretations

· Relative stability of isotopes

o Even/Odd trends

· Calculating binding energy and relative binding energy

· Island of stability

· Predicting radioactive decay paths via island of stability

· Nucleosynthesis of the elements: pathways and explanations

o H burning

o He burning

o Other burning

o n-addition/beta decay

· Nuclear fission reactions

o How a chain reaction happens

· How a nuclear power plant works

· How nuclear fuel is produced

· Using radioactive decay rates to obtain dates of old things

Earth and Its Elements

Formation of the Earth, Chemical Interpretation

Biggest redox reaction in the world

Why is the core metal and why is it in the center of the Earth

Extracting elements
Metals

Method vs. ease of reduction

Gold

Chlorine

Sulfur

Practice Questions

1. Describe the relative universal (cosmic) abundance of the elements. Note all major features of a plot of abundance vs. atomic number. Explain all major trends.

2. Describe all the forces at work in a Li atom. Describe the nature of each force, whether it is a attractive or repulsive force, and rank the forces from strongest to weakest.

3. Describe how the isotope C-12 comes to exist.

4. Describe how the isotope Fe-56 comes to exist.

5. Calculate the binding energy for the Be-9 nucleus and for the C-12 nucleus. Which is more stable?

6. Describe the process by which uranium-based nuclear fuel is produced.

7. Describe how a nuclear weapon could be made if you have a functioning nuclear power plant and supply of uranium fuel with 4% ²³⁵U (but you do not have any U-enrichment facilities of your own)

8. By what decay path would you expect C-15 to be radioactive? What about N-12?

9. What would the Earth be like if nonmetals were in abundance and metals were the limiting reactants during the planet’s formation?

10. K⁺ is hard to reduce to K. By what method is metallic K most likely made?

11. The reaction to form iron from iron ore is,

2 Fe₂O₃ + 3 C à 4 Fe + 3 CO₂

However, the process of using a blast furnace to perform this involves adding CaCO₃, which is used to decompose to make CO₂. Why must CO₂ be added if it is a product instead of a reactant?