Page 70 - Arrow Pushing in Inorganic Chemistry A Logical Approach to the Chemistry of the Main Group Elements

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The s-Block Elements: Alkali

and Alkaline Earth Metals

Sir Humphry Davy
Abominated gravy.
He lived in the odium
Of having discovered sodium.
E. Clerihew Bentley, in Biography for Beginners (1905)

The s-block metals, admittedly, are not the most fertile ground for arrow pushing because
their overwhelming tendency is to lose their outermost s electrons and generate the corres-
ponding cations: +1 for alkali metals and +2 for alkaline earth metals. The elements never
occur in their free state in nature, and even their discovery in the early 1800s by the English
chemist and inventor Sir Humphrey Davy relied on the then brand-new technique of electro-
lysis. Yet we wouldn’t dream of glossing over them in this book: they are to chemistry what
water and salt—the best known s-block compounds—are to life, if we may wax poetic
for a moment. Water and Salt, incidentally, is also an Italian fairy tale where a princess
tells her father, “Oh father, I love thee as meat loves salt,” which indirectly inspired
+ + 2+ 2+
Shakespeare’s King Lear. Life processes depend on Na ,K ,Mg , and Ca ions in
countless ways. An important example is the adenosine triphosphate (ATP) powered Na–K
pump, which sits astride cell membranes (as schematically depicted in Figure 2.1) and
+ +
ensures a low intracellular concentration of Na and a high concentration of K .Add to
that lithium batteries, hydrogen-powered cars, and the prospect of a hydrogen economy,
and there can be little doubt about the all-round importance of the s-block elements.

Arrow Pushing in Inorganic Chemistry: A Logical Approach to the Chemistry of the Main-Group Elements,
First Edition. Abhik Ghosh and Steffen Berg.
© 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2014 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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