I'm new to chemistry and I don't understand this!

Question

my chemistry teacher told me to memorize group IA metals, group IIA metals, group IIIA metals, group IVA metals, group VA metals, and groups IVA-VIIA non-metals.

I don't really know what any of that means! help!

Answer 1

They're the vertical "families" of elements on the Periodic Table that he's tell you to memorize.

The confusing Roman Numeral system is an IUPAC thing they put into effect (personally I think it's just to make things more confusing). Basically all you have to do is find out what standard counting number the Roman numerals correspond to and, excluding the transition metals, count out the families of elements. So that would be 1-7 or in other words the Alkali metals (aka the Hydrogen family), the Alkaline Earth metals (aka the Beryllium family), the Boron family, the Carbon family, the Nitrogen family, the oxygen family and the Flourine family (assuming you meant to put "VI" instead of "IV" twice there). The Inert gases would be family VIIIA which I don't believe he told you to memorize (they're easy, it's Helium, Neon, Argon, Krypton, Xeon and Radon in that order and I did it off the top of my head).

Answer 2

When you look at the periodic table, you will see that at the top of every column (vertical), there is a arabic numeral (ie IA, IIA, etc.) These are the groups. The very first column is the IA metals. Just look at the numbers at the top, those will be what you have to memorize. When your professor says "metals and nonmetals" he's just telling you what kind of elements are within that column.