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### Electron Gain Enthalpy Electron gain enthalpy generally becomes more negative across a period as we move from left to right. Within a group, electron gain enthalpy becomes less negative down a group. However, adding an electron to the 2p-orbital leads to greater repulsion than adding an electro...

### Electron Gain Enthalpy Electron gain enthalpy generally becomes more negative across a period as we move from left to right. Within a group, electron gain enthalpy becomes less negative down a group. However, adding an electron to the 2p-orbital leads to greater repulsion than adding an electron to the larger 3p-orbital. Hence the element with most negative electron gain enthalpy is chlorine; the one with the least negative electron gain enthalpy is phosphorus. ### Electronegativity A qualitative measure of the ability of an atom in a chemical compound to attract shared electrons to itself is called electronegativity. Unlike ionization enthalpy and electron gain enthalpy, it is not a measurable quantity. However, a number of numerical scales of electronegativity of elements viz., Pauling scale, Mulliken-Jaffe scale, Allred-Rochow scale have been developed. The one which is the most widely used is the Pauling scale. Linus Pauling, an American scientist, in 1922 assigned arbitrarily a value of 4.0 to fluorine, the element considered to have the greatest enthalpy change for the process depicted in equation 3.3 is defined as the ELECTRON consideration. If energy is released when an electron is added to an atom, the electron is assigned a negative sign. However, electron affinity is defined as absolute temperature (T) heat capacities of the reactants and the products have to be taken into