Elements (Think Before You Act)

The Periodic Table of the Elements is a table that displays the list of chemical elements which are organized based on their properties. They are listed in increasing atomic number; while rectangular in general outline, gaps are included in the rows or periods to keep elements into groups with similar properties. Examples of these are the halogens and the noble gases, which are kept together in columns or groups, creating distinct, rectangular areas or blocks. The table is greatly widely used in chemistry due to containing the properties of many elements and their relations between different properties. It provides a basis for analyzing chemicals and the behavior, as well as in other sciences.

Although previous versions did exist, the current and most reliable one was made by the Russian-French chemist Dmitri Mendeleev, who developed it in 1869 to organize chemicals and elements by their properties (only known elements at that time were in the table). However, as time passed by and new elements and their chemical behavior were discovered, they were added to the Periodic Table. Mendeleev’s table also predicted some properties of some of the unknown elements at that time, which were expected to fill the missing spaces in his table. Fortunately, they were proved right when those new elements were discovered and found to have the right properties just as the predictions foretold.

The elements’ atomic numbers range from numbers 1 (Hydrogen) to 118 (Ununoctium) have been isolated. All the elements from hydrogen to californium naturally exist, with all the other elements artificial made in laboratories (and all are radioactive due to the fact uranium is required to make new elements). The need to create new elements beyond ununoctium is still being perused to this day. The only problem to this is how the periodic table may need to be updated to handle the new elements.