What do the slots in the cation pieces represent?

The number of tabs or slots represents the number of lost or gained electrons. The ions with tabshave gained one or more electrons, and therefore are anions. The ions with slots have lost one or more. The model is made this way so the anions and cations can be connectedand form a compound.

Explanation:

It's from goog|e ngl -3-

alkaline metals are lithium, sodium, rubidium, potassium, cesium and francium.

alkali metals have electronegativity from 0.7 to 1, lowest in periodic table of elements, which means that alkali metals (i group in periodic table) has positive oxidation number in compounds.

electronegativity is a chemical property that describes the tendency of an atom to attract a shared pair of electrons towards itself.

alkaline metals (far left in main group) have lowest ionizations energy and easy remove valence electrons,

for example, potassium is the alkali metal and has a single valence electron in the outer electron shell.

electron configuration of potassium is: ₁₉k 1s²2s²2p⁶3s²3p⁶4s¹.

they can not exist alone in nature, because they are very reactive.

he uptake of drugs from the intestine is often strongly influenced by diffusion. for example, consider a water-insoluble steroid for treating inflammation that is solubilized in aggregates of detergent molecules, called micelles. these micelles, aggregates of 80 soap molecules, have a molecular weight of 24,000, a diameter of 2.6 nm, and a charge of -27. the positively charge ions (counterions) in this system are na".