Oxidation States of Transition Metals

pzona

I have a question regarding the possible oxidation states of metals. I understand how to find the oxidation state of a metal in a compound, that's pretty straightforward. What I'm interested in is finding possible oxidation states given only the name of the metal. For example, Cu has possible +1 and +2, how do I figure this out without looking it up? Or is it a purely experimental value? I don't really need to know for any particular reason, just so I don't have to look up possible values when I'm doing problems in the future.

I would imagine it comes from the electron configuration, but I can't see any obvious correlation. Am I on the right track? Does anyone have any links on this? Thanks in advance for the help.

Borek

Mostly periodic table, in the case of transition metals there is no One Rule to bring them all

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