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How does electronegativity change down Group 16?
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oxygen group element
Modern version of the periodic table of the elements (printable).
In Group 16 of the periodic table, electronegativity decreases in intensity as the elements increase in atomic number and mass moving down the column.1
Oxygen, the lightest member of the group, possesses the highest electronegativity of any element except for fluorine. As you proceed down the group to heavier elements like sulfur, selenium, tellurium, and polonium, these values decrease sharply. This trend reflects the transition from nonmetallic character at the top of the group toward increasingly metallic properties at the bottom, where the heavier elements tend to lose electrons rather than gain them in chemical combinations.1