there is an important general lesso

there is an important general lesson to be learned from this analysis. Any property such as the standard reduction potential of an element may be determined by several more fundamental properties which, while fairly simple in themselves, work together in a complex way. Thus while sublimation energy ionization energy and hydration energy may each vary in a simple manner in a given sequence of elements, their net effect can be an irregular set of standard reduction potentials. it is always tempting in studying descriptive chemistry to attribute an observed trend in chemical behavior to the smooth variation of a single fundamental property of atoms, but this should be done cautiously, for it is more than likely that any observed chemical property is related to several more fundamental factors.