Fun Friday: Periodic Table Week 2, and answers from last weeks question

First off, I have to thank you all for being so engaged in last Friday's fun Friday. I did not know that all of you were chemists, or at least chemists with the help of Google :) Today I wanted to do a follow up to last week, still involving last week's post. Before I get too deep into the question, let me answer the question for last week's Fun Friday, although I'm sure I picked a too easy of a question.


Last Weeks Answer Was..... CARBON!

Yep, the element was Carbon. It is element #6 on the table if you are ordering via atomic number, the number of protons in an atom. The periodic table above is not the best one, but it is an SVG graphic (new type of graphic, based off of lines of text). It does not list the atomic number, but oh well. I'll do.

So I will ask all of you this week four questions:

1. Why is Carbon...Carbon? I am asking about why it can bind so well together, and what it is called when the 2s and 2p paths combine together, creating many, many different types of bonds.
2. What is the last stable element on the board? At some point in the board, all other elements beyond this element is unstable, and is indeed radioactive. I will give you a hint, it is in the Carbon family as well. Yes, the Carbon family is a very special family indeed.
3. What is an isotope? Name an isotope.
4. Why is Hydrogen 1 (H - 1) so unique?

I also wanted to touch on something that Gary Rumain told me about on the last post, and that was the ability for Silicon to be used as a substitute for Carbon. I checked with some chemists and a good friend of mine that happens to teach Physical Science about this one to see what they think, and I thought I should share their thoughts here. In theory, Silicon could be used in place of Carbon, but it is not existent here on Earth (that we know of). We can't prove that it can't happen, but generally those special bonds that makes Carbon so unique is because it has only 2 energy levels. The farther away the electrons are away from the nucleus, the harder it is to get those same special bonds. I'll go ahead and disclaim that this is all set stone, because the science of atoms has changed drastically over the past 100 years.

See what you can do to answer these questions. As before, I encourage you to please not refer to online internet sites for your information, as this is just something meant to be for fun, and not to truly test you. You don't have to try to answer them all unless you desire to.

So, go ahead and take a stab at these questions in the comments below! Try to number the questions that you are trying to answer.