Writing Electron Configurations for an Ion

[Frederick Keith_4C]

I think I kind of understand how to write or find the electron configuration of a neutral atom, but I'm kind of confused as to what changes in the configuration once the atom gets charged and becomes an ion.
Do i just add an electron when forming an anion? and do I just remove an outermost electron when forming a cation?

[Lelija Kazlauskas 3J]

Yes that would be right. An ion is basically just a neutral atom with electrons either taken away or added. So when writing the electron configuration for an ion, you would start removing or adding valence electrons from the neutral electron configuration.

[Maggie Eberhardt - 2H]

I'm not too confident on this topic either, but I'm pretty sure you remove or add an electron to the highest energy level depending on whether you want a cation or anion. For example, to change Zinc from its ground-state to Zn+, you take the ground state configuration [Ar]3d^104s^2 and remove an electron to make it more positive. This leaves you with [Ar]3d^104s^1

[Amy Xiao 1I]

I'm not too confident on this topic either, but I'm pretty sure you remove or add an electron to the highest energy level depending on whether you want a cation or anion. For example, to change Zinc from its ground-state to Zn+, you take the ground state configuration [Ar]3d^104s^2 and remove an electron to make it more positive. This leaves you with [Ar]3d^104s^1

This sounds correct to me! Thanks for the example with Zinc.

[Alexandra Bartolome 2H]

Yes because an anion has a negative charge and a cation has a positive charge. Nonmetal atoms form anions with an octet corresponding to the configuration of the following noble gas.

[Amanda Mei 1B]

Yes, that's all that changes!

[504939134]

When writing the electron configuration of an ion, it changes from that of its parent element because you are changing the number of electrons in the element. When writing the change configuration you have to look at the charge of the ion, if its a positive charge it means that electrons were removed of its outermost shell. When it has a negative charge it means it had electrons added to it. To find the configuration you remove as much atoms or add as many electrons as the charge of the ion indicates.