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The process of gaining or losing electrons from a neutral atom or molecule is called ionization. Atoms can be ionized by bombardment with radiation , but the more usual process of ionization encountered in chemistry is the transfer of electrons between atoms or molecules.
The trend in the ionization energy of atoms is often used to demonstrate the periodic behavior of atoms with respect to the atomic number, as summarized by ordering atoms in Mendeleev's table. This is a valuable tool for establishing and understanding the ordering of electrons in atomic orbitals without going into the details of wave functions ...
Atoms tend to get smaller toward the right in the periodic table, and become much larger at the next line of the table. Atoms to the right of the table tend to gain electrons, while atoms to the left tend to lose them. Every element on the last column of the table is chemically inert .
Atoms that lose electrons make positively charged ions (called cations). This transfer of electrons is known as electrovalence in contrast to covalence . In the simplest case, the cation is a metal atom and the anion is a nonmetal atom, but these ions can be more complex, e.g. molecular ions like NH +
Electrons jumping to energy levels of smaller n emit electromagnetic radiation in the form of a photon. Electrons can also absorb passing photons, which drives a quantum jump to a level of higher n. The larger the energy separation between the electron's initial and final state, the shorter the photons' wavelength. [4]
In chemistry, the oxidation state, or oxidation number, is the hypothetical charge of an atom if all of its bonds to other atoms were fully ionic. It describes the degree of oxidation (loss of electrons) of an atom in a chemical compound. Conceptually, the oxidation state may be positive, negative or zero.
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The Bohr model of the atom, with an electron making instantaneous "quantum leaps" from one orbit to another with gain or loss of energy. This model of electrons in orbits is obsolete. A problem in classical mechanics is that an accelerating charged particle radiates electromagnetic radiation, causing the particle to lose kinetic energy.