Bio:

The "Student Exploration: Periodic Trends" Gizmo is an interactive tool designed to help students understand the periodic trends of elements in the periodic table. The key focuses on trends such as atomic radius, ionization energy, electronegativity, and electron affinity across periods (rows) and groups (columns). These trends show that atomic radius generally decreases across a period and increases down a group, ionization energy and electronegativity tend to increase across a period and decrease down a group. The Gizmo helps visualize these trends by manipulating variables like element position and observing the resulting changes in atomic properties. The answer key typically includes the expected trends based on periodic table principles, explaining how electron configuration and nuclear charge influence these characteristics. It is important for students to perform the experiment themselves to fully grasp the underlying concepts.