Question

Hydrogen is not found free in the nature because hydrogen is a:
(a) reactive element
(b) non-reactive element
(c) noble elements
(d) none of the above.

Answer 1

Reactive metals are those which have a strong tendency to react with the metallic acids, mineral acids etc. in order to acquire the nearest noble gas configuration or stable half-filled electronic configuration in their valence shell and we know that the hydrogen atom has one electron in its valence shell. Now answer the statement.

Complete step by step answer:
Hydrogen is alkali metal and belongs to the first period and first group of the period table and has one electron in its valence shell and has atomic number as one and mass number as two. Now, considering the statement ; Reactive metals are those metals which have a strong tendency to react with the chemical reagents such as mineral acids , acids etc. Hydrogen has only one electron in its outermost valence shell and it has a very strong tendency to accept one electron to acquire the fully filled electronic configuration of s- shell and to acquire nearest noble gas electronic configuration of helium which is a noble gas and hence it is very reactive. On the other hand, non-reactive metals are those which have very low reactivity than the others are called as the non -reactive metals. Examples : platinum, gold , rhodium etc. since, hydrogen has high reactivity, so it doesn’t come under this category. Now, coming to noble metal. A noble metal is that which doesn't undergo oxidation even at very high temperatures. Examples include silver, gold, Palladium etc. since hydrogen atoms can undergo oxidation ( lose electrons) , so it isn’t a noble metal.

So, hence option (a) is correct.

Note: Noble metals are the metallic elements which have catalytic properties i.e. used as catalysts in many chemical reactions and have a tendency to control the rate of chemical reactions. Noble metals are very important as they are very rare in nature.