Question

All the elements of oxygen are family of:
(This question has multiple correct options )
A) Non-metal
B) Metalloid
C) Radioactive
D) Polymorphic

Answer 1

In order to solve this question we will have to study about the nature of family of the group of oxygen family and we will do the complete study of all the elements of this group one by one the following properties such as the metallic property, radioactivity etc.

Complete step-by-step answer:
For solving this question we need to do the systematic study of the elements of this group. The oxygen family, also called the chalcogens, consists of the elements found in Group 16 of the periodic table and is considered among the main group elements. It consists of the elements oxygen, sulfur, selenium, tellurium and polonium. These can be found in nature in both free and combined states. The group 16 elements are intimately related to life.

We need oxygen all the time throughout our lives. Did you know that sulfur is also one of the essential elements of life? It is responsible for some of the protein structures in all living organisms. Many industries utilize sulfur, but emission of sulfur compounds is often seen more as a problem than the natural phenomenon. The metallic properties increase as the atomic number increases. The element polonium has no stable isotopes, and the isotope with mass number 209 has the longest half-life of 103 years.

Now we will now study one by one of the elements of the oxygen group:

Oxygen: Oxygen is an element that is widely known by the general public because of the large role it plays in sustaining life. Without oxygen, animals would be unable to breathe and would consequently die. Oxygen is not only important to supporting life, but plays an important role in many other chemical reactions. Oxygen is the most common element in the earth's crust and makes up about 20% of the air we breathe.

Sulfur: Sulfur is a chemical element that is represented with the chemical symbol "S" and the atomic number 16 on the periodic table. Because it is 0.0384% of the Earth's crust, sulfur is the seventeenth most abundant element following strontium. Sulfur also takes on many forms, which include elemental sulfur, organo-sulfur compounds in oil and coal, H2S(g) in natural gas, and mineral sulfides and sulfates.

Selenium: Element number 34, selenium, was discovered by Swedish chemist Jons Jacob Berzelius in 1817. Selenium is a non-metal and can be compared chemically to its other non-metal counterparts found in Group 16: The Oxygen Family, such as sulfur and tellurium.

Tellurium: Discovered by von Reichenstein in 1782, tellurium is a brittle metalloid that is relatively rare. It is named from the Latin tellus for "earth". Tellurium can be alloyed with some metals to increase their machinability and is a basic ingredient in the manufacture of blasting caps. Elemental tellurium is occasionally found in nature but is more often recovered from various gold ores.

Polonium: Polonium was discovered in 1898 by Marie Curie and named for her native country of Poland. The discovery was made by extraction of the remaining radioactive components of pitchblende following the removal of uranium. There is only about 10-6 g per ton of ore! Current production for research purposes involves the synthesis of the element in the lab rather than its recovery from minerals. This is accomplished by producing Bi-210 from the abundant Bi-209.

Livermorium: In May of 2012 the IUPAC approved the name "Livermorium" (symbol Lv) for element 116. The new name honors the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (1952). A group of researchers of this Laboratory with the heavy element research group of the Flerov Laboratory of Nuclear Reactions took part in the work carried out in Dubna on the synthesis of superheavy elements including element 116.

Now we have studied all the elements of this group one by one and we found that the common thing in all the elements is that all are non-metals and all of them are found in the many forms so all are polymorphic.

Hence the correct answers are option ‘A’ and ‘D’.

Note: There is one more form in which oxygen exist that is ozone which is found in atmosphere in the form of ${O_3}$ ;
Schonbein (1840) concluded that Van Marums observations in 1785 of a peculiar smell, when an electric discharge was passed through oxygen (or air), was in fact a new gas. He named it Ozone, which is derived from a Greek word ozoaterr meaning smell. Soret in 1860, assigned the molecular formula O3. The occurrence of ozone is in small amounts, in the upper layer of the atmosphere, where it is formed due to the action of ultraviolet rays on the oxygen of the air. It is also present in seawater where it is formed due to the reaction of fluorine with water.