Question

Is oxygen negative or positive?

Answer 1

The oxygen atom is going to be denoted with a symbol ‘O’. The atomic number of oxygen is eight (8) and it belongs to the p block and is located in VIth group. The VIth group elements are called the oxygen family.

Complete step-by-step answer: - In the question it is asked is oxygen negative or positive.
- The negative or positive character of any element in the periodic table is going to depend on the capacity of acceptance of an electron.
- If the element accepts electrons easily means the element has high electronegativity and if any element donates electrons easily then the element will have less electronegativity.
- Means the capacity to accept the electrons is going to be denoted with the term electronegativity.
- Coming to the concept of charge of oxygen.
- The number of electrons in an oxygen atom is 8.
- The electronic configuration of oxygen is $1{{s}^{2}}2{{s}^{2}}2{{p}^{4}}$ .
- In the electronic configuration of oxygen we can see there is a vacancy of two electrons in 2p orbital.
- Means oxygen will accept two electrons and will get the Neon (inert gas) electronic configuration.
- Therefore to gain stability oxygen will accept two electrons and will get a negative charge.
- So, the charge on the oxygen is negative.

Note: Because of the acceptance of the electrons oxygen will get negative charge. It means that oxygen has high electronegativity. When oxygen is attached to hydrogen and carbon we can see the formation of the partial positive charges on carbon and hydrogen due to high electronegativity of oxygen.