Question

Zinc,cadmium and mercury are soft metals or hard metals and if they are soft then why do not take them in s block

Answer 1

Dear student,
Soft metals are the metals which can be easily reduced to their stable oxidation states.
Hard metals are the metals which resist the change in their oxidation states.
Zinc, cadmium and mercury are soft metals because they can be oxidised to their very stable +2 oxidation state.

The position of an element in the periodic table depends on the valence shell present in the element. All of the three elements have d -orbital as the last orbital, so they are placed in the d -block of the periodic table and not in the s -block.


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