Why alkaline earth metals are harder than alkali metals?

Sodium $Na_11^23$ is so reactive that if sodium metal is placed in water it will react vigorously to produce Hydrogen gas and heat often causing an explosion. All of...

....$"al-quily"$ meaning the $"ashes, potash"$. And of course we commonly find the hydroxides of the alkali metals from extracting the ashes of a fire with water - hence $"potash"$, i.e....

It is well known that ionization energies INCREASE across a Period from left to right as we observe the Table, but decrease down a Group. Across the Period, as nuclear...

In the absence of actual data, I would guess that the ionization energy of alkaline earth, i.e. the energy associated with the given reaction: $"Alkaline Earth+energy"rarr"(Alkaline Earth)"^+ + e^-$ would...

Hydrogen is commonly grouped with the alkali metals, the which all have the one valence electron in the $s$ shell. Under extreme, high pressure conditions, metallic hydrogen has been claimed....

The realization that earths were in fact oxides was attributed to Lavoisier. And the Group 2 metals form a stable series of sparingly soluble binary oxides. I am told that...

Given the $ns^1$ configuration, the metals are strongly reducing. Their reaction with water reflects this: $M(s) + H_2O(l) rarr M(OH)(aq) + 1/2H_2(g)$ They also react quantitatively with liquid ammonia (another...

Two factors are important here. $"A priori"$ we would expect that it would be harder to remove an electron from a cation than from a neutral species. This is from...

As the outermost electrons are further from the positive nucleus there is less attraction between the negative electron(s) and the nucleus. As there is less attractive force it requires less...

Alkali metals have 1 valence electron on their outer shell. They are more stable when they have 8 , so they want to lose that valence electron. They do this...