[jkrumh1]

Hello
I always learned that noble gases are highly unreactive, however, everything that i have read about them has never said that they do not react with anything.
I also have seen compounds such as XeF6 (or 8 i forget)
My question is how do they react?
The only reason that i can come up with is that energy is run through the gas and it reacts while some of the electrons are at a higher level?
how do they really react?
:gathering2:

[chemicalLindsay]

your right the noble gases are chemically inert and as a result often dont react with any other elements or compounds.however you are right as some noble gases ,under the right circumstances (right amount of activation energy ) will or might form chemical compounds usually with extremely reactive elements such as fluorine.Xenon for example can form compounds with flourine and neon can form compounds with other elements under very special laboratory conditions but then the compounds might only be present for a very short time.But as you said the noble gases are generally inert as they all usually have the noble gas configuration (exception is helium) which I think means that all the  shells of electrons are full thus there is no need generally for a noble gas to bond with another atom in order to become more stable and/or lose electrons (vice versa). (2nsquared where n is the shell number will tell you the maximum nuber of electrons a shell can hold)

now for how they react ,I dont really know but  I think that seeing that  (Im trying to figure it out using the example above)fluorine is a halogen (the most reactive of all) is the furthest along the period and so has a very high electron affinity (love of electron )and being such a small atom and so reactive it will oxidise any other element easily and once a fluorine atom has gained a electron it will have the noble gas elec tron configuration of 2,8 and a charge of -1.By looking at this and seeing that xenon is pretty far down in the group we can see that it will have similar properties to the other noble gases but not exact which means that it might not be as inert as the others.So my idea is that flourine will combine with xenon and a covalent bond would be formed between the two (maybee there would be more than two combining) thus a compound would be formed.(correct me if im wrong,just trying)

here is a representation of the flourine atom:

[chemicalLindsay]

oh and here is one of xenon

[jdurg]

I believe you are correct.  Xenon is a pretty big atom, so those outer electrons aren't feeling as strong an attraction to the nucleus as the outer electrons of helium, argon, krypton and neon are.  Therefore, when a VERY electronegative fluorine atom gets close, the outer electron of Xenon feels the strong positive charge on the fluorine atom and will "jump ship" over to fluorine.  This then leaves Xenon wide open to the formation of chemical bonds.  Helium will pretty much never react with anything because there is almost no electronic shielding and the addition of any electrons would give it a negative charge.  

[Limpet Chicken]

Is there any possibillity that a helium plasma, maybe using one of the higher isotopes of helium, might form compounds when mixed with a fluorine plasma? maybe the high energy states would allow them to combine    or you could aim to shoot the other way and either fire the plasma through helium in the liquid phase, or try fluoro-antimonic acid HF(SbF5) on liquid helium?

Fluoroantimonic acid is COMPLETELY evil stuff, it can and WILL protonate almost any known substance, even such strong acids like fuming HNO3, H2SO4, HF will behave as BASES!!! with this nasty stuff  

[budullewraagh]

Xe's effective nuclear charge is 8.25, 12.42 and 15.61 according to slater, clementi and froese-fischer, respectively.  

its ionization energies (kJ/mol^-1) are:
0->+1=1170.4  +1->+2=2046
+2->+3=3097   +3->+4=4300
+4->+5=5500   +5->+6=6600
+6->+7=9300   +7->+8=10600
+8->+9=19800  +9->+10=23000

it can form XeF2, XeF+, XeF4, XeO3, XeOF4, XeO2F2, XeF6, XeF7-, XeF8-2, XeO4, XeO3F2, BaXeO6, and XeO6-4(aq)

by the way, i'd like to add that fluoroantimonic acid is bloody disturbing and actually scares my socks off.  speaking of which, i'd better retrieve my socks now.

[shrapov]

hi! im working on a proyect about these and i will be so happy if someone help with a question imn having why are xenon radon and krypton the more reactive noble gases? also what are the appropiate conditions for the generation of noble gases compounds?

[jdurg]

Chemical reactions occur when the outer electrons of an atom interact with the outer electrons of another atom.  Atoms also want to achieve an electronic configuration which results in their oute shell of electrons being completely full.  (Which for almost all atoms equals an outer shell comprised of 8 electrons.  Hydrogen, Helium, Lithium, Beryllium, and somtimes Boron and rarely Carbon are the exceptions to that rule and are happy with just two outer electrons).  So the atoms will react in order to acheive the electronic configuration of their nearest noble gas.  This is why the halogens and the alkali/alkaline earth metals are so reactive.  The halogens just need one more electron to obtain the electronic configuration of their nearest noble gas, and the alkali metals really want to give up their lone extra electron in order to also get a noble gas configuration.

You also need to remember that the nucleus of an atom has a positive charge, and the electrons have a negative charge.  So the electrons will be attracted to a higher positive charge.  The halogens, especially fluorine, have a very strong effective nuclear charge.  That means that their nucleus is very readily felt by their electrons, and the electrons of other atoms.  As a result they generally tend to form ions with a -1 charge as they get the electronic configuration of their nearest noble gas.  Alkali metals are the opposite.  They have a relatively weak effective nuclear charge so their lone outer electron tends to feel the presence of other atoms' nuclei as opposed to their own.  Now what the heck does this have to do with the noble gases?

The noble gases show a pretty strong effective nuclear charge, but it is perfectly counter-balanced by the full outer shell of electrons they have.  As a result, the electrons from other atoms can't really be 'pulled' by the noble gas' nucleus, and the nucleus of other atoms generally don't have enough of a pull to grab an electron from a noble gas atom.  However, this isn't the case for the heavier noble gases.  As you may recall from general chemistry classes, the reactivity of the alkali metals increases as you move down the group, and the opposite is true of the halogens.  The alkali metals increase in reactivity because they want to give up an electron, while that of the halogens decreases because they want to take an electron.  The one common trait you can pull from this has to be a weakened effective nuclear charge.  The reason why the force felt by the outer electrons from that atom's nucleus is weaker is because the further down a group you go, the more electrons there are around the nucleus.  Like repells like, so the electrons kind of buffer each other.  As a result, on atoms like cesium that lone outer electrons feels almost no pull from the nucleus and will easily jump ship and cause a 'reaction'.  With iodine, its nucleus generally doesn't exert much of a pull on other atoms' electrons, so it has a harder time in terms of reacting with other elements.  This is all caused by the shielding effect that those electrons have on each other.

With the noble gases like radon, xenon, and krypton, they have a good number of electrons surrounding their nucleus.  As a result, those outer electrons don't feel as strong a tug from their own nucleus as the outer electrons of atoms like Helium, Neon, and Argon do.  Therefore, if you take an element that exerts a very strong pull from its nucleus (like fluorine does), you can get that other element to pull an electron off of those noble gases and make them react.  Highly reactive compounds containing fluorine atoms, as well as elemental fluorine, are mixed with the noble gases and allowed to react.  The fluorine atoms pull an electron off of the noble gas giving it a positive charge and the fluorine atom a negative charge.  Charges are balanced and everybody is happy.  However, these noble gas compounds are not all that stable and will readily decompose back into the noble gas and fluorine.

So in a sense, it's the size of the noble gas atom that determines the ease of its reactivity.  Xenon, Radon, and Krypton are fairly big atoms so their outer electrons are more apt to be pulled off by a strong electron grabbing substance.