Friday, 10 April 2009

The Periodic Table By Cameron Webb The Periodic Table is simply a way of displaying chemical elements. One of the special things about the periodic table is how it is arraged, elements are listed in order of the increasing atomic number, like the number of protons in the atoms nucleus. Also rows of elements are arranged so that the elements with similar properties fall into the same columns (groups or families). For example group 1 is Alkali metals, Group 2 are the Alkali Earth Metals, Group 7 are the Halogins, Group 8 are the Nobal Gases and the big group in the middle are the Transition Metals. In 1869, a Russian chemist named Dmitri Mendeleev came up with a way of organizing the elements-this was obviously the "Periodic Table" He set them out in order of the weight of the atom, and then grouped them into rows and columns based on their chemical and physical properties. One of the things which made it even more incredible is that he was able to place these elements in the periodic table with out the aid of any modern equipment, but what I find quite amusing is that he played a sort of game to place these elements. What he did was he wrote the elements on a piece of card and played a sorting game with them ( thier size, how much electrons it had, stuff like that.) This then led to the shape of the periodic table.