The name boron was adopted by analogy with carbon. In 1808 boron was isolated independently by Joseph Louis Gay-Loussac and Louis Jacques Thenard, and Humphry Davy who proposed the name boracium, after the mineral borax. Together with groups 17 and 18, these elements form the p-block.Īlthough boron-containing minerals were known historically, boron compounds were not used widely prior to the 19th century when the mineral borax became widely available. The lighter group 15 elements can form anions with a -3 charge, and the lighter group 16 elements can form anions with a -2 charge. Group 15 elements have 5 valence electrons in their outer shell, and group 16 elements have 6.The lighter of these elements can form both cations with a +4 charge, and anions with a -4 charge. Group 14 elements have 4 valence electrons in their outer shell.Group 13 elements have 3 valence electrons and mostly form cations with a +3 charge.As a result, these groups contain non-metals like nitrogen, oxygen and sulfur, all the semimetals, and metals like aluminium, tin, lead, and bismuth. The metallic properties of these elements decrease along each period and increase down each group. The thing they have in common is the progressive filling of a p-orbital. Groups 13-16 don’t really fit together in any nice way, so let’s look at them one by one. Why are elements in Groups 13-16 categorised together? In this article, we give you the history and uses for the elements in Groups 13-16.

Periodic table groups names chemistry