Solution:
The above statement is false.The energy which is released when an isolated gaseous atom accepts an electron to form a gaseous negative ion is said to be the electron affinity of an element. In other words, electron affinity is the tendency of a gaseous atom to gain electrons. The electron affinity decreases on moving down a group and it increases on moving left to right in a period. The electron affinity of fluorine is less than that of chlorine as the atomic size of fluorine is very less than that of chlorine. This results in large repulsions between the electrons of fluorine. So, in the fluorine atom, the electron that is gained experiences less attraction from the nucleus than in an atom of chlorine.
The corrected statement would be, “Chlorine has the highest electron affinity in the periodic table”.
