• Question: How Was The Periodic Table Created?

    Asked by anon-191494 to Kathryn, Graeme, Chris, Anne, Agnes, Adam on 6 Nov 2018.
    • Photo: Agnes Wojtusiak

      Agnes Wojtusiak answered on 6 Nov 2018:

      Someone looked at all the tiniest things around us and thought: “hmmmm… they can go in groups… and there’s some kind of pattern to all this…” and they were right!
      .
      It’s actually pretty cool, because then the pattern implied that there should be more elements in between, before we even discovered them!

    • Photo: Anne Green

      Anne Green answered on 6 Nov 2018:

      By grouping the chemical elements according to the properties and behaviour they have in common. Doing this helped them work out their structure, for instance number of electrons and how they’re distributed. Particle physicists have done something similar with the fundamental particles that atoms are made of: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elementary_particle#/media/File:Standard_Model_of_Elementary_Particles.svg

    • Photo: Kathryn

      Kathryn answered on 7 Nov 2018: last edited 7 Nov 2018 10:30 am

      I cannot add more than my Colleagues below. It is always being expanded and everything new falls into place. It is a very nice system.

      Thanks for the question.

      Cheers

      Kathryn

    • Photo: Adam McGuinness

      Adam McGuinness answered on 7 Nov 2018:

      I have no idea, sorry! I do know it is very clever and that the person who invented it was then able to predict some elements that hadn’t even been discovered, your chemistry teacher will probably know more, but it’s a very impressive achievement.

    • Photo: Chris Davies

      Chris Davies answered on 7 Nov 2018:

      Well I actually learnt something to this question! I’m with Adam on this one, I had no idea how the periodic table was created but thanks to Anne now I know!

    • Photo: Graeme Poole

      Graeme Poole answered on 7 Nov 2018:

      The original periodic table looked very different from todays’ one. It was more of a list. But in the 1800s Dmitri Mendeleev created the modern Periodic Table by arranging the elements in order of their masses. He even left gaps in the table where he though new elements might fit and these were filled in over time as more and more elements were discovered

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