IIT-JEE 2007 · Paper 1, Chemistry question 37

Paragraph for Question Nos. 36 to 38

Noble gases have been known to occur in the atmosphere as trace constituents. The noble gases have closed-shell electronic configuration and are monoatomic gases under normal conditions. The low boiling points of the lighter noble gases are due to weak dispersion forces between the atoms and the absence of other interatomic interactions.

The direct reaction of xenon with fluorine leads to a series of compounds with oxidation numbers +2, +4 and +6. $\ce{XeF4}$ reacts violently with water to give $\ce{XeO3}$. The compounds of xenon exhibit rich stereochemistry and their geometries can be deduced considering the total number of electron pairs in the valence shell.

(The paragraph is not printed in the official archive copy (which reproduces only the questions with their answers); its text is restored from the JEE 2007 question paper.)