Hi there, my name is Dr. Scott Melidio and in this short under five minute video, we are going to cover what elements are cations and which ones are anions. We need to remember that cations are positively charged because they are losing electrons and anions are negatively charged because they are gaining electrons. The periodic table is an excellent resource for us to identify what elements are cations and anions. Looking at it, all the elements to the left of the staircase are metals and they will form cations. Please be aware that hydrogen is a non-metal and everything to the left of the staircase in this direction are our non-metals and they are going to be our anions. To recap, metals are cations with positive charges and non-metals are anions with negative charges. In the next video, we will talk about determining how many electrons each element gains or loses by discussing the octet rule and a periodic trend. I hope this was helpful. Thank you for taking the time to watch this video.