What is special about the electronic structure of neon and argon?
Helium, Neon, Argon, Krypton, Xenon belongs to 8th group (right hand most column in the periodic table). They are called as inert gas elements. Their outer electronic configuration will be s2p6 (max# electrons in s-orbital is 2 and p-orbital is 6). so they dont participate in any reactions under normal conditions (because they dont need any more electrons to attain stable/inert gas configuration). u can see very rare examples of Xenon compounds with electronegative Fluorine and Oxygen. for more info see the following web http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noble_gas hope this helps..
