Why physical and chemical properties are found among the nonmetals?

Because the elements they tend to gain electrons to form anions during chemical reactions, they are electronegative elements with high ionization energies, so they are non-lustrous, brittle and poor conductors of heat and electricity. They cannot react to water as its their chemical property due to being unable to break the bond between H and O in water. The non-metals cannot reduce hydrogen by donating electrons.

explanation:

metals have excess of electrons whereas non-metals have deficiency of electrons. thus, in order to gain stability metals easily donate their electrons to the non-metals.

for example, electronic configuration of sodium is and electronic configuration of phosphorous is .

when a phosphorous atom and sodium atom combine together then sodium will donate is extra one electron to the phosphorous atom. as a result there will be formation of ionic bond between sodium and phosphorous.

the reaction will be as follows.

there, are three sodium sodium atoms and each of them will donate its one extra electron to phosphorous atom. thus, the sub-shell of phosphorous gets completely filled.  

thus, we can conclude that electrons are transferred from atoms of sodium to atoms of phosphorous. this transfer makes the sodium atoms donate one electron and the phosphorous atoms to gain one electron. as a result, the sodium and phosphorus atoms strongly attract each other.