Happy 150th Birthday to the Periodic Table

5 Jan 2019

Happy 150th Birthday to the Periodic Table

Happy 150th Birthday to the Periodic TableSome hate it and some love it … but everyone has to use it… ‘The Periodic Table of Elements” in chemistry.

In 2017, the United Nations (UN) declared 2019 as the International Year of the Periodic Table of Chemical Elements (IYPT 2019). There were two objectives:

to emphasize the significance of the Periodic Table
 	to celebrate the 150th year since it was first published

Periodic Table

Each square on the Periodic Table contains atomic number (the number of protons in an element), the element’s atomic symbol (one or two letters), element’s name and atomic weight (the sum the atom’s protons and neutrons).

History of Periodic Table

Many chemists started working on identifying the chemical elements and their atomic properties, then simplifying how to organise and memorise them since 1700s. It was in 1869, a Russian Scientist Dimitri Mendeleev, through deck of cards, arranged 63 known elements in rows and columns and groups of similar properties.
 	Mendeleev left many elements and spaces empty, as he believed that not all elements were known to him and as they get discovered in future, they would be fitting to the empty spaces in the table.

Credit – Wikimedia Commons

He was right. Today there are 118 known elements.
 	The Modern Periodic Table is represented in a different way, where the elements are presented in rows, instead of columns.
 	There were many other chemists, who worked on the elements and arranging them to Periodic Table prior to and after Mendeleev. These include Heinrich Baumhauer, Antoine Lavoisier, Alexandre-Émile Béguyer de Chancourtois, John Newlands, Julius Lothar Meyer, Charles Janet.

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Some hate it and some love it … but everyone has to use it… ‘The Periodic Table of Elements” in chemistry. In 2017, the United […]

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