An industrial chemist is studying a sample of an unknown metal. describe two ways he could change the metal physically and two ways he could change the metal chemically to try to identify it.

Some of the physical changes used by the industrial chemist in order to identify it is by scratching it with other metals in order to find the hardness of it. Trying to deform it in order to find the malleability, and to heat it and measure the temperature in order to find the melting point.  

Some of the chemical changes used by the industrial chemist in order to identify it is by inserting it in water to observe that whether it reacts with it or not, if the reaction is violent, then the metal belongs to either group I or group II. The other method is to insert it in acids of distinct strength and to observe its reaction. The metals belonging to the second group react briskly with acids. The other metals react gradually with acids and others are almost inert.  

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.