Prior to the 19th century, substances that were nonmetallic, insoluble in water, and unchanged by fire were known as earths. Those earths, like lime, that resembled the alkalies (soda ash and potash) were designated alkaline earths. Alkaline earths were thus distinguished from the alkalies and from other earths, such as alumina and the rare earths. By the early 1800s it became clear that the earths, formerly considered to be elements, were in fact oxides, compounds of a metal and oxygen. The metals whose oxides make up the alkaline earths then came to be known as the alkaline-earth metals and have been classified in group II Group 2 of the periodic table ever since Mendeleyev proposed his first table in 1869.
The alkaline-earth metals are extremely electropositive; that is, like the alkali metals of group Group 1 (Ia), their atoms easily lose electrons to become positive ions (cations). Most of their typical compounds are therefore ionic: salts in which the metal occurs as the cation M2+, where M represents any group IIa Group 2 atom. The salts are colourless unless they include a coloured anion (negative ion). Typical alkaline-earth compounds, calcium chloride (CaCl2) and calcium oxide (CaO), may be contrasted with the compounds of the alkali metals (which contain M+ ions), sodium chloride (NaCl) and sodium monoxide (Na2O). The oxides of the alkaline-earth metals are basic (i.e., alkaline, in contrast to acidic). A fairly steady increase in electropositive character is observed in passing from beryllium, the lightest member of the group, to radium, the heaviest; as a result of this trend, beryllium oxide is only weakly basic and even shows acidic properties, whereas barium and radium oxide are strongly basic. The metals themselves are highly reactive reducing agents; that is, they readily give up electrons to other substances that are, in the process, reduced.
All the metals and their compounds find commercial application to some degree, especially magnesium alloys and a variety of calcium compounds. Magnesium and calcium, particularly the latter, are abundant in nature and play significant roles in geologic and biological processes. Radium is a rare element; all its isotopes are radioactive.
The earliest known alkaline earth was lime (Latin: calx), which is now known to be calcium oxide; it was used in ancient times in the composition of mortar. Magnesia , (the name derives probably from the ancient district of Magnesia in Asia Minor), the oxide of magnesium, was shown to be an alkaline earth different from lime by the Scottish chemist Joseph Black in 1755; he observed that magnesia gave rise to a soluble sulfate, whereas that derived from lime was known to be insoluble. In 1774 Carl Wilhelm Scheele, the Swedish chemist who discovered oxygen, found that the mineral called heavy spar or barys (Greek: heavy) contained a new earth, which became known as baryta (barium oxide). A further earth, strontia (strontium oxide), was identified by the London chemists Adair Crawford and William Cruickshank in 1790 on examining a mineral (strontium carbonate) found in a lead mine at Strontian in Argyllshire, Scotland. Beryllia (beryllium oxide) was extracted from the mineral beryl and recognized as an earth by the French analytical chemist Nicolas-Louis Vauquelin in 1798. Though at first confused with alumina (aluminum oxide) because both dissolve in alkali, beryllia was shown to be distinct; unlike alumina, it reprecipitated when the alkaline solution was boiled for some time. Beryllia was originally called glucina (Greek glykys, sweet) because of its sweet taste. (This etymological root is retained in France, where the element beryllium is also known as glucinium.)
Magnesium, calcium, strontium, and barium—elements derived from alkaline earths—were isolated as impure metals by Sir Humphry Davy in 1808 by means of the electrolytic method he had previously used for isolating the alkali metals potassium and sodium. The alkaline-earth metals were later produced by reduction of their salts with free alkali metals, and it was in this way (the action of potassium on beryllium chloride) that beryllium was first isolated by the German chemist Friedrich Wöhler and the French chemist Antoine Bussy independently in 1828. Radium was discovered in 1898 by means of its radioactivity by Pierre and Marie Curie, who separated it from barium.
The alkaline-earth elements are highly metallic and are good conductors of electricity. They have a gray-white lustre when freshly cut but tarnish readily in air, particularly the heavier members of the group. Beryllium is sufficiently hard to scratch glass, but barium is only slightly harder than lead. The melting points and boiling points of the group (see Table) are higher than those of the corresponding alkali metals; they vary in an irregular fashion, magnesium having the lowest (mp 650° C and bp 1,105° C) and beryllium the highest (mp 1,283° and bp about 2,500°). The elements crystallize in one or more of the three regular close-packed metallic crystal forms. Chemically, they are all strong reducing agents. The free metals are soluble in liquid ammonia—the dark-blue solutions of calcium, strontium, and barium arousing considerable interest because they are thought to contain metal ions and the most unusual species, solvated electrons, or electrons resulting from the interaction of the metal and the solvent. Highly concentrated solutions of these elements have a metallic, copper-like appearance, and further evaporation yields residues containing ammonia, which correspond to the general formula M(NH3)6. The solutions are strong reducing agents and are useful in a number of chemical processes.
The atoms of the alkaline-earth elements all have similar electronic structures, consisting of a pair of electrons (designated s electrons) in an outermost orbital, within which is a stable electronic configuration corresponding to that of a noble gas. The noble gas elements—helium (He), neon (Ne), argon (Ar), krypton (Kr), xenon (Xe), and radon (Rn)—have generally complete electron shells. Strontium has the configuration 1s22s22p63s2 3p63d104s24p65s2, which may be written as (krypton core) 5s2, or simply [Kr] 5s2. Similarly, Be may be designated as [He] 2s2, Mg as [Ne] 3s2, Ca as [Ar] 4s2, Ba as [Xe] 6s2, and Ra as [Rn] 7s2. The prominent lines in the atomic spectra of the elements, obtained when the elements are heated under certain conditions, arise from states of the atom in which one of the two s electrons has been promoted to a higher energy orbital. The s electrons are relatively easily ionized (removed from the atom), and this ionization is the characteristic feature of alkaline-earth chemistry. The ionization energy (the energy required to strip an electron from the atom) falls continuously in the series from beryllium (9.32 electron volts [eV]) to barium (5.21 eV); radium, the heaviest in the group, has a slightly higher ionization energy (5.28 eV). The small irregularities observed in the otherwise smooth change as one proceeds down the group as it appears in the periodic table are explained by the uneven filling of electron shells in the successive rows of the table. The s electrons may also be promoted to p orbitals of the same principal quantum number (within the same shell) by energies similar to those required to form chemical bonds; the atoms are, therefore, able to form stable covalently bonded structures, unlike helium, which has the otherwise analogous electronic configuration of 1s2.
Zinc, cadmium, and mercury, the group Group 12 (IIb) elements, are often compared with the alkaline-earth elements calcium, strontium, and barium. Cadmium, for example, has the electronic configuration [Kr] 4d105s2, with the ten 4d electrons taking virtually no part in chemical bonding. The 5s2 electrons, however, are much less readily ionized in cadmium than they are in strontium, for the 4d electrons act as an ineffective shield for the corresponding increased charge on the cadmium nucleus. The chemistry of the IIb metals, therefore, is markedly less ionic than the chemistry of the alkaline-earth metals.
The chemistry of the alkaline-earth metals, like that of the alkali metals, is for the most part reasonably interpreted in terms of an ionic model for the compounds formed. This model is less satisfactory for the chemistry of beryllium and magnesium than for the heavier alkaline-earth metals. In fact, most beryllium compounds are molecular (covalent) rather than ionic. Although there is some evidence for the transient existence of singly charged alkaline-earth ions, in most cases the chemistry of these elements is dominated by the formation and properties of the doubly charged M2+ ions, in which the outermost s electrons have been stripped from the metal atom. The resulting ion is stabilized by electrostatic interaction with a solvent, like water, which has a high dielectric constant and a great ability to absorb electrical charge, or by combination with ions of opposite charge in an ionic lattice such as is found in salts. The extra energy required to remove the second s electron (the second ionization energy being approximately twice the first) is more than compensated for by the extra binding energy present in the doubly charged ion. The removal of a third electron from an alkaline-earth atom, however, would require an expenditure of energy greater than could be recouped from any chemical environment. As a result, therefore, the alkaline-earth metals show a constant oxidation state of +2 in their compounds.
The sizes of the ions of the alkaline-earth elements increase steadily from Be2+, which has a radius of 0.31Å or 31 × 10−10 cm, to Ra2+ with a radius of 1.40Å. The ionic radius of the europium ion Eu2+ (1.12Å) is very close to that of strontium Sr2+ (1.13Å); this means that Eu2+ ions can sometimes be used as a “probe” for the alkaline-earth metals, substituting for strontium ions in situations where advantage can be taken of the spectroscopic and magnetic properties that make Eu2+ readily identifiable. The ionic radius of the cadmium ion Cd2+ (0.97Å) is very similar to that of calcium Ca2+ (0.99Å). A quantitative comparison of cadmium and calcium chemistry, therefore, clearly shows up the less ionic character of cadmium chemistry without complications due to differences in ionic size. A related comparison may be made between mercury and strontium, because of the similar ionic radii of Hg2+ (1.10Å) and Sr2+ (1.13Å).
The chemistry of radium is less well investigated than that of the other alkaline-earth metals. As expected, however, it is in general an extrapolation of the chemistry of calcium, strontium, and, especially, barium.
The group IIa Group 2 ions are readily hydrated, with the strength of bonding to the water molecules increasing with decreasing ionic radius. Although the number of water molecules directly attached to the metal ion may be greater with the larger ions for purely steric (geometrical) reasons, the total number of water molecules associated with the metal ion nevertheless increases inversely with the size of the ion itself (as shown by migration experiments conducted in aqueous solution). Large anions, such as sulfate, tend to form weak ion-pair complexes more readily with the larger metal ions of the family, but weak-acid anions, such as acetate, tend to form stronger complexes with the smaller metal ions, particularly those of magnesium and beryllium. That many of these complexes are molecular rather than ionic is shown by their ready extraction from aqueous solution (which preferentially dissolves ionic substances) into organic solvents (which dissolve molecular ones).
Beryllium is widely distributed in the Earth’s crust, of which it composes about 0.001 percent; its cosmic abundance is 20 on the scale in which silicon, the standard, is one million. Although there are about 30 recognized minerals containing beryllium, only three—beryl (3BeO · Al2O3 · 6SiO2), phenacite (2BeO · SiO2), and chrysoberyl (BeO · Al2O3)—are of any significance, and only the first is of industrial importance. The precious forms of beryl, emerald and aquamarine, have a composition closely approaching that given above, but industrial ores contain less beryllium; most beryl is obtained as a by-product of other mining operations, the larger crystals being picked out by hand.
Exploration for beryllium has been considerably facilitated by the development of the berylometer, a portable device that detects very small quantities of beryllium in almost any mixture. The device depends on the bombardment of the sample with gamma rays from the radioactive isotope antimony-124. The gamma rays interact specifically with beryllium atoms to give neutrons that can be counted electronically.
The extraction of beryllium is complicated by the fact that beryllium oxide is found only as a minor constituent, tightly bound to alumina and silica. Treatment with acids, roasting with complex fluorides, and liquid–liquid extraction have all been employed to concentrate beryllium oxide. The oxide is converted to fluoride via ammonium beryllium fluoride and then heated with magnesium to form elemental beryllium. The element is purified by vacuum melting.
Metallic beryllium is grayish, and its chemical properties somewhat resemble those of aluminum. Though resistant to air oxidation under normal conditions, it is readily attacked by acids and alkalies. The applications of beryllium depend upon its unusual combination of physical properties. A very light metal, it has a high mechanical strength and a high melting point. Because of its low atomic weight it has a high transparency to X rays (17 times greater than aluminum), which makes it ideal as a material for windows of X-ray tubes. Its ability to slow down fast neutrons has found considerable application in atomic piles. Beryllium has been developed as a structural material for specific applications particularly within the aerospace industry.
Beryllium is used in a number of commercial neutron sources. The alpha particles released by radioactive decay of radium atoms react with atoms of beryllium to give, among the products, neutrons with a wide range of energies—up to about 5 × 106 eV. If radium is encapsulated, however, so that none of the alpha particles reach beryllium, neutrons of energy less than 600,000 eV are produced by the more penetrating gamma radiation from the decay products of radium.
Magnesium, comprising about 2.5 percent of the Earth’s crust, is the eighth most abundant element and, after aluminum and iron, the third most plentiful structural metal; its cosmic abundance is estimated as 9.1 × 105 atoms (Si = 106 atoms). It occurs as carbonates (magnesite, MgCO3, and dolomite, CaCO3 · MgCO3) and in many common silicates, including asbestos, talc, and olivine. It also is found as the hydroxide (brucite), chloride (carnallite, KCl · MgCl2 · 6H2O), and sulfate (kieserite).
Magnesium is commercially produced chiefly by the electrolysis of molten magnesium chloride and by the thermal reduction of magnesium oxide with ferrosilicon (see magnesium processing).
Magnesium is the lightest metal that can be commonly used for structural purposes (its density is 65 percent that of aluminum and 22 percent that of iron), a property widely exploited. Its thermal and electrical conductivity and its melting point are very similar to those of aluminum. Whereas aluminum is attacked by alkalies but is resistant to most acids, magnesium is resistant to most alkalies but is readily attacked by most acids (chromic and hydrofluoric acids are important exceptions). At normal temperatures it is stable in air and water owing to the formation of a thin protective skin of oxide (but burns rapidly when heated in air), and it is attacked by steam. Magnesium is a powerful reducing agent and is used to produce other metals from their compounds (e.g., titanium, zirconium, and hafnium). It reacts directly with many elements; with organic halides in ether solution it forms Grignard reagents. Because of its ready combustibility, magnesium finds application in explosive and pyrotechnic devices.
Magnesium is mainly used in the form of alloys, which usually contain 10 percent or less of other elements, generally added to increase the strength of the metal. The most important alloys are those of aluminum and zinc. Casting, rolling, extruding, and forging techniques are all employed with the alloys, and further fabrication of the resulting sheet, plate, or extrusion is carried out by normal forming, joining, and machining operations. Magnesium is the easiest structural metal to machine and has often been used when a large number of machining operations are required.
Magnesium is essential to all living systems. The photosynthetic function of plants depends upon the action of chlorophyll pigments, which contain magnesium at the centre of a complex, nitrogen-containing ring system (porphyrin). These magnesium compounds enable the energy of light to be used to convert carbon dioxide and water to carbohydrates and oxygen and thus directly or indirectly provide the key to nearly all living processes. Magnesium also takes part in a number of enzyme reactions, which control energy transfer in living cells.
Calcium is the fifth most abundant element in the Earth’s crust, to which it contributes an estimated 3.64 percent; its cosmic abundance is estimated at 4.9 × 104 atoms (Si = 106 atoms). One of the most widely distributed elements, it occurs as carbonate (chalk, limestone, marble, calcite), sulfate (anhydrite, gypsum), fluoride (fluorite or fluorspar), and phosphate (apatite). It is also found in a large number of silicates and aluminosilicates, in salt deposits, and in natural waters, including the sea. Calcium carbonate deposits dissolve in water that contains carbon dioxide to form calcium bicarbonate, Ca(HCO3)2. This process frequently results in the formation of caves and may reverse to deposit limestone as stalactites and stalagmites. Calcium is essential to both plant and animal life. A large number of living organisms concentrate calcium in their shells or skeletons, and indeed in higher animals calcium is the most abundant inorganic element. Many important carbonate and phosphate deposits owe their origin to living organisms.
The metal is produced by thermal reduction of lime with aluminum under high vacuum and by electrolysis of fused calcium chloride. It reacts with water and, upon heating, with oxygen, nitrogen, hydrogen, halogens, boron, sulfur, carbon, and phosphorus as well. Calcium’s commercial applications depend largely on these reactions. Although it compares favourably with sodium as a reducing agent, calcium is more expensive and less reactive than the latter. In many deoxidizing, reducing, degasifying, and alloying applications, however, calcium often is preferred because of its lower volatility. Small percentages of calcium are used in many alloys for special purposes.
The sulfate (as uncalcined gypsum) is employed as a soil corrector. Calcined gypsum is used in making tile, wallboard, lath, and various plasters. Plaster of Paris, the hemihydrate, CaSO4 · 12 H2O, is produced by partial calcination at about 120° C; mixed with water, it forms a plastic mass that hydrates to a hard white plaster.
The hydrogen sulfite, Ca(HSO3)2, is made by the action of sulfur dioxide on a slurry of Ca(OH)2. Its aqueous solution under pressure dissolves the lignin in wood to leave cellulose fibres and thus finds considerable application in the paper industry.
The phosphates are the principal minerals for the production of phosphate fertilizers and for a whole range of phosphorus compounds. The rock is usually treated with sulfuric acid to form Ca(H2PO4)2, which may be applied directly to the land. The fluoride, CaF2, is important to the production of hydrofluoric acid, which is made from CaF2 by the action of sulfuric acid.
Strontium comprises about 0.025 percent of the Earth’s crust; its cosmic abundance is estimated as 18.9 atoms (Si = 106 atoms). Although it is widely distributed with calcium, there are only two principal ores of strontium alone, celestine (SrSO4) and strontianite (SrCO3). Metallic strontium may be obtained by the electrolysis of strontium chloride or by reduction of the oxide with aluminum, but there is little commercial demand for the metal because calcium and barium are more readily obtainable and fulfill the functions for which strontium might be used.
The chemistry of strontium is quite similar to that of calcium. The biological properties of strontium are also very close to those of calcium and distinct from those of barium, whose soluble compounds, for example, are poisonous.
The artificial isotopes strontium-89 (52-day half-life) and more especially strontium-90 (28-year half-life), found in radioactive fallout, are extremely hazardous. They become deposited in bones, where they replace calcium; their radiation then damages bone marrow, impairs the process of forming new blood cells, and may induce cancer.
Barium occurs to the extent of about 0.05 percent in the Earth’s crust; its cosmic abundance is estimated as 3.7 atoms (Si = 106 atoms). Two minerals are common: the more important sulfate (BaSO4, barite, barytes or heavy spar), used principally in oil-drilling “mud,” and the carbonate (BaCO3, witherite). The metal may be produced by electrolysis of barium chloride, but the most effective method is the reduction of the oxide by heating with aluminum or silicon in a high vacuum. Only a few tons of the metal are produced each year. It is used chiefly as a “getter” in vacuum tubes, where it removes the last traces of various gases.
About 16 isotopes of radium, all radioactive, are known; their half-lives, except for radium-226 (1,600 years) and radium-228 (5.8 years), are less than a few weeks. The long-lived radium-226 is found in nature as a result of its continuous formation from uranium-238 decay. Radium thus occurs in all uranium ores, but it is more widely distributed because it forms water-soluble compounds; the Earth’s surface contains an estimated 1.8 × 1013 grams of radium.
The story of the discovery and isolation of radium by Pierre and Marie Curie (1898) is well known. The Curies observed that the major part of the radioactivity of pitchblende was caused by a previously unknown substance that could be concentrated with barium and then separated from it by laborious fractional crystallization. The separation was followed by the increase in intensity of new lines in the ultraviolet spectrum and by a steady increase in the apparent atomic weight of the material until a value of 225.18 was obtained, remarkably close to the accepted value of 226.03.
In modern technology, radium is separated from barium by fractional crystallization of the bromides, followed by purification by ion-exchange techniques for removal of the last 10 percent of the barium. Radium metal may be prepared by electrolytic reduction of its salts.
The chemistry of radium is what would be expected of the heaviest of the alkaline earths, but the intense radioactivity is its most characteristic property. One gram of radium-226 undergoes 3.7 × 1010 disintegrations per second, producing energy equivalent to 6.8 × 10−3 calories, sufficient to raise the temperature of a well-insulated sample at the rate of 1° C every 10 seconds. The practical energy release is even greater than this, due to the production of a large number of short-lived radioactive decay products. The alpha particles emitted by radium may be used to initiate nuclear reactions; a mixture of beryllium (see above Beryllium) and radium is used as a neutron source. Radium mixed with a phosphor that could be excited by the alpha particles was widely used in the manufacture of luminous paints for watch and instrument dials until the early 1950s, but less hazardous alpha emitters have largely replaced it. Although radium-226 is not a very intense gamma emitter, its decay products are; thus radium has been used in medicine as a source of gamma rays for the irradiation of tumours. One of the products of radium decay is radon, the heaviest noble gas; this decay process is the chief source of that element.
Radium tends to concentrate in bone where alpha radiation interferes with red corpuscle production and can lead to bone cancer. The hazards of radium were disastrously emphasized by the deaths of a number of women who had been employed painting luminous dials during World War I and who had ingested considerable amounts of radium through the habit of licking the points of their brushes. The detection of exhaled radon provides a very sensitive test for radium absorption.