PLEASE HELP ME!! A 74.0-gram piece of metal at 94.0 °C is placed in 120.0 g of water in a calorimeter at 26.5 °C. The final temperature in the calorimeter is 32.0 °C. Determine the specific heat of the metal. Show your work by listing various steps, and explain how the law of conservation of energy applies to this situation.

explanation:

metals have excess of electrons whereas non-metals have deficiency of electrons. thus, in order to gain stability metals easily donate their electrons to the non-metals.

for example, electronic configuration of sodium is and electronic configuration of phosphorous is .

when a phosphorous atom and sodium atom combine together then sodium will donate is extra one electron to the phosphorous atom. as a result there will be formation of ionic bond between sodium and phosphorous.

the reaction will be as follows.

there, are three sodium sodium atoms and each of them will donate its one extra electron to phosphorous atom. thus, the sub-shell of phosphorous gets completely filled.  

thus, we can conclude that electrons are transferred from atoms of sodium to atoms of phosphorous. this transfer makes the sodium atoms donate one electron and the phosphorous atoms to gain one electron. as a result, the sodium and phosphorus atoms strongly attract each other.

the number of valence electrons for each molecule or ion is shown beneath the structure. remember hydrogen will not have more than two electrons. this hydrogen is part of a covalent bond (sharing two electrons). a double bond here would cause hydrogen to share four electrons with phosphorus.

atomic mass = 39

number of neutrons = 20

number of protons= 19

electronic configuration = 1s2 2s2 2p6 3s2 3p6 4s1

the number of electron in first shell = 2

number of electrons in n=3 shell = 8