Why is potassium metal more chemically reactive then neon gas?
First, we’ll start with neon gas. All of the noble gases have full electron shells in their s and p orbitals. The electrons that are free to interact with surrounding atoms (i.e. valence electrons) generally dictate the properties of a substance. Since the noble gases (including neon) have full shells, they are pretty “happy” and do not want to gain or lose electrons (also, these gases hold on to the electrons tightly). Now to potassium; potassium (K) metal has an electron configuration where there is a configuration similar to neon, but with 1 extra electron into its S-shell. In this configuration, the potassium atom really doesn’t want that electron so it is willing to “part” in order to achieve a similar amount of electrons as neon (and hence a more stable configuration). This means that elements like oxygen or fluorine (which want to gain electrons) will react quite violently with the potassium to “take” its electron. Note that elements in rows 1,2, and 13 want to give up 1, 2, and
