Question 14

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For MCAT purposes, we are forced to believe statements made in the passage for the purposes of answering the question.

That aside, this remains a concept that students are responsible for so it is a good question.

Some perspective of the forces in nature: nuclear >> electronic >> gravitational (gravity being one of the weakest forces in nature).

Electronic forces refer to the force of attraction between positive and negative charges like the nucleus and electrons. As you know from Colomb's Law, there is an inverse square relationship between force and distance (common MCAT question). In other words, double the distance between the 2 charges and you quarter the force.

The first quantum number refers to the number of shells away from the nucleus. The bigger n is, the further from the nucleus the electrons are, and thus the force of attraction to the nucleus becomes weaker and weaker (this is why ionization energy decreases as you go down a period because it becomes easier and easier to remove the least tightly bound electron).