[Corvettaholic]

Oh crap you're right!!! I feel stupid now. I'm so used to lumping mostly inert stuff in with noble gases  

Well since it ain't noble, react away!

[One Armed Scissor]

Hold your horses... am I missing something here? I thought that the triple bond was extremely unstable and would cause extreme reactions to occur.

e.g. Ethyne (Acetylene)

How in the world would a triple bond cause stability when it is notorious for being responsible for the extreme reactivity of acetylene? (e.g. Oxyacetylene used in blowtorches   )

[Mitch]

Hold your horses... am I missing something here? I thought that the triple bond was extremely unstable and would cause extreme reactions to occur.

e.g. Ethyne (Acetylene)

How in the world would a triple bond cause stability when it is notorious for being responsible for the extreme reactivity of acetylene? (e.g. Oxyacetylene used in blowtorches   )

Don't confuse reactivity with thermodynamic stability.

[ksr985]

ok people, there are 3 reasons for the inertness of nitrogen:

1. it is a non polar molecule(unlike CO, with which it is isoelectronic)
2. it has a very high bond energy(triple bond, d uh)
3. according to MO theory, the energy gap between its HOMO and LUMO is very high. the HOMO energy is too low for it to donate electrons, and the LUMO energy is too high for it to accept any.(phew!)

courtesy:
Shriver/Atkins
Cotton/Wilkinson

[Mitch]

ok people, there are 3 reasons for the inertness of nitrogen:

1. it is a non polar molecule(unlike CO, with which it is isoelectronic)
2. it has a very high bond energy(triple bond, d uh)
3. according to MO theory, the energy gap between its HOMO and LUMO is very high. the HOMO energy is too low for it to donate electrons, and the LUMO energy is too high for it to accept any.(phew!)

I hate questions like these because its vague and not necessarily factual in the first place. Although what ksr posted is a good set of predicters it won't always be accuarate for all situations. A simpler answer is that N2 forms few products that will yield an overall negative delta G for some arbitrary chemical reaction.

This assumes we're talking about idealized groundstate singlet Nitrogen. The rules change very swiftly with a bit of energy pumping into the system.

[Garneck]

What about Haber-Bosch synthesis?

The synthesis of ammonia requires very high pressures, high temperatures and lots of iron catalyst.

[Garneck]

Oh yeah, I just remembered. A N₂ molecule has all the binding orbitals filled and the non-binding empty

[constant thinker]

Our air is mostly all nitrogen. Nitrogen in its gaseous state exist diatomically (N₂). I haven't heard of any reactions in nature occuring with gasseos nitrogen. I'd imagine for the nitrogen gas to react one of the bonds would have to be broken. Either alot of energy (lightning) or something very reactive (like sodium) will break the bonds. Some bacteria can "fixate" nitrogen. These bacteria are found primarily at the roots of plants to my knowledge. With a catalyst it may react.

From all the posts we can conclude that nitrogen gas is unreactive in nature unless energy is added or it encounters a substance or bacterium capable of breaking one of the bonds.

Anyone have anything to add or was my summary good.

[Garneck]

From all the posts we can conclude that nitrogen gas is unreactive in nature unless energy is added

Yeah, as far as I remember - about 1 MJ per mole to break all three bonds.

[AWK]

From all the posts we can conclude that nitrogen gas is unreactive in nature unless energy is added

But in some cases is more reactive then oxygen, eg lithium nitride is formed in air in comparable amounts to lithium oxide.

[constant thinker]

Lithium though is almost never found as just the element lithium. It is always bonded to something. I said in nature. In nature you don't generally find the alkali metals in their elemental form. That means it is unlikely that a reaction between nitrogen and an alkali is unlikely. In a lab situation you can have what ever you want (with some restrictions).

[jdurg]

In nature, you generally don't tend to find ANYTHING in their elemental form.  Nitrogen gets into the ecosystem in some manner, so therefore it has to be reactive.

Lithium is very reactive towards nitrogen.  Sodium and the other alkali metals really are not reactive towards nitrogen at all.  If you leave some pure sodium metal in a container with nitrogen, you're not going to see any reaction.  Replace that sodium with some fresh lithium, and you'll soon see the metal take on a dull coating from the reaction with nitrogen.  (This is why pure elemental lithium can be such a pain to work with.  It not only corrodes from the presence of oxygen and water, but nitrogen will corrode it as well.  For an element collector like myself, this makes lithium a real pain in the ass).  

[constant thinker]

Nitrogen gets into the ecosystem from large static discharges (lightning) and bacteria that break it down and use it to create other compounds. This is what a biology teacher told me. For it to be of any use to leaving things it must be "fixed". Two ways to do this is what I previously said. There are probably other ways, but I can only think of thoses two.

[ksr985]

Lithium Nitride is rendered highly stable by the fact that anionic and cationic sizes in the lattice are comparable. This is why lithium is the only alkali metal to form a nitride. Both the cation, and the anion are small, and this makes the lattice stable. The other alkali metals are larger in size and cannot form nitrides.

[limpet chicken]

Monatomic N is an interesting allotrope of nitrogen, it looks like a bright yellow, glowing cloud, and is formed by the action of passing N2 through a corona discharge in a glass tube, with just the smallest trace of O2, larger concentrations of oxygen prevent the formation of N in the monatomic state.

Monatomic nitrogen is metastable, and reverts in time, back to the normal diatomic molecular form.

An interesting fact about monatomic nitrogen is on contact with metallic mercury, it very quickly reacts to form the explosive compound mercury nitride, HgN.

I wonder, if it would react with alkali metal azides, to give a further compound with the formula X-N4, where X is either a transition metal or group I or II metal.

Also, has anyone an insight, or information on the properties of the chalcogen or halogen series' reactivity with monatomic nitrogen? I would be MOST interested to learn more about its properties.