Scientist: The Contributions of The in The Development of The Periodic
Scientist: The Contributions of The in The Development of The Periodic
Scientist: The Contributions of The in The Development of The Periodic
CLASS: 4 INTELEK
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INTRODUCTION
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The periodic table of the chemical elements (also periodic table of the
elements or just periodic table) is a tabular display of the chemical elements. Although
precursors to this table exist, its invention is generally credited to Russian chemist Dmitri
Mendeleev in 1869, who intended the table to illustrate recurring ("periodic") trends in
the properties of the elements. The layout of the table has been refined and extended over
time, as new elements have been discovered, and new theoretical models have been
The periodic table is now ubiquitous within the academic discipline of chemistry,
providing a useful framework to classify, systematize, and compare all of the many
different forms of chemical behavior. The table has found many applications in
current standard table contains 118 elements as of March 2010 (elements 1–118).
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SCIENTISTS DISCOVERIES
1. Antoine Lavoisier - Substances were classified into 4 groups with similar chemical properties.
2. J.W Dobereiner - Substances were arranged in 3 groups.
eight element.
- This system was inaccurate because there were some elements with wrong mass
numbers.
4. Lothar Meyer - The atomic volume = mass of 1 mole (g)
density (g cm -3)
In the Beginning
A necessary prerequisite to the construction of the periodic table was the discovery of the
individual elements. Although elements such as gold, silver, tin, copper, lead and
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mercury have been known since antiquity, the first scientific discovery of an element
occurred in 1649 when Hennig Brand discovered phosphorous. During the next 200
years, a vast body of knowledge concerning the properties of elements and their
compounds was acquired by chemists (view a 1790 article on the elements). By 1869, a
total of 63 elements had been discovered. As the number of known elements grew,
schemes.
Law of Triads
In 1817 Johann Dobereiner noticed that the atomic weight of strontium fell midway
between the weights of calcium and barium, elements possessing similar chemical
properties. In 1829, after discovering the halogen triad composed of chlorine, bromine,
and iodine and the alkali metal triad of lithium, sodium and potassium he proposed that
nature contained triads of elements the middle element had properties that were an
average of the other two members when ordered by the atomic weight (the Law of
Triads).
This new idea of triads became a popular area of study. Between 1829 and 1858 a
number of scientists (Jean Baptiste Dumas, Leopold Gmelin, Ernst Lenssen, Max von
Pettenkofer, and J.P. Cooke) found that these types of chemical relationships extended
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beyond the triad. During this time fluorine was added to the halogen group; oxygen,
sulfur,selenium and tellurium were grouped into a family while nitrogen, phosphorus,
arsenic, antimony, and bismuth were classified as another. Unfortunately, research in this
area was hampered by the fact that accurate values of were not always available.
periodicity of chemical and physical properties, credit for the first periodic table
in terms of increasing atomic weight. When the cylinder was constructed so that 16 mass
units could be written on the cylinder per turn, closely related elements were lined up
vertically. This led de Chancourtois to propose that "the properties of the elements are the
reoccur every seven elements, and using this chart, he was able to predict the the
stoichiometry of several metallic oxides. Unfortunately, his chart included some ions and
Law of Octaves
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John Newlands, an English chemist, wrote a paper in 1863 which classified the 56
established elements into 11 groups based on similar physical properties, noting that
many pairs of similar elements existed which differed by some multiple of eight in
atomic weight. In 1864 Newlands published his version of the periodic table and
proposed the Law of Octaves (by analogy with the seven intervals of the musical scale).
This law stated that any given element will exhibit analogous behavior to the eighth
There has been some disagreement about who deserves credit for being the "father" of the
periodic table, the German Lothar Meyer (pictured here) or the Russian Dmitri
Mendeleev. Both chemists produced remarkably similar results at the same time working
version of a periodic table used to classify the elements. This consisted of about half of
the known elements listed in order of their atomic weight and demonstrated periodic
table which he gave to a colleague for evaluation. Unfortunately for Meyer, Mendeleev's
table became available to the scientific community via publication (1869) before Meyer's
appeared (1870).
Dmitri Ivanovich Mendeleev (1834-1907), the youngest of 17 children was born in the
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Siberian town of Tobol'sk where his father was a teacher of Russian literature and
student in his early education partly due to his dislike of the classical languages that were
mathematics and science. After his father's death, he and his mother moved to St.
Petersburg to pursue a university education. After being denied admission to both the
Main Pedagogical Institute (St. Petersburg Institute). Upon graduation, Mendeleev took a
graduate work at St. Petersburg University where he earned a Master's degree in 1856.
Mendeleev so impressed his instructors that he was retained to lecture in chemistry. After
spending 1859 and 1860 in Germany furthering his chemical studies, he secured a
until 1890.
which appeared in thirteen editions the last being in 1947, Mendeleev organized his
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material in terms of the families of the known elements which displayed similar
properties. The first part of the text was devoted to the well known chemistry of the
halogens. Next, he chose to cover the chemistry of the metallic elements in order of
combining power -- alkali metals first (combining power of one), alkaline earths (two),
etc. However, it was difficult to classify metals such as copper and mercury which had
multiple combining powers, sometimes one and other times two. While tryuing to sort
out this dilema, Mendeleev noticed patterns in the properties and atomic weights of
halogens, alkali metals and alkaline metals. He observed similarities between the series
Cl-K-Ca , Br-/Rb-Sr and I-Cs-Ba. In an effort to extend this pattern to other elements, he
created a card for each of the 63 known elements. Each card contained the element's
symbol, atomic weight and its characteristic chemical and physical properties. When
Mendeleev arranged the cards on a table in order of ascending atomic weight grouping
elements of similar properties together in a manner not unlike the card arrangement in his
favorite solitare card game, patience, the periodic table was formed.
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From this table, Mendeleev developed his statement of the periodic law and published
his work On the Relationship of the Properties of the Elements to their Atomic Weights in
1869. The advantage of Mendeleev's table over previous attempts was that it exhibited
similarities not only in small units such as the triads, but showed similarities in an entire
within one vote of being awarded the Nobel Prize for his work. At the time that
Mendeleev developed his periodic table since the experimentally determined atomic
masses were not always accurate, he reordered elements despite their accepted masses.
For example, he changed the weight of beryllium from 14 to 9. This placed beryllium
into Group 2 above magnesium whose properties it more closely resembled than where it
had been located above nitrogen. In all Mendeleev found that 17 elements had to be
moved to new positions from those indicated strictly by atomic weight for their properties
to correlate with other elements. These changes indicated that there were errors in the
accepted atomic weights of some elements (atomic weights were calculated from
combining weights, the weight of an element that combines with a given weight of a
standard.)
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However, even after corrections were made by redetermining atomic weights, some
elements still needed to be placed out of order of their atomic weights. From the gaps
present in his table, Mendeleev predicted the existence and properties of unknown
gallium, scandium and germanium were found later to fit his predictions quite well. In
addition to the fact that Mendeleev's table was published before Meyers', his work was
more extensive predicting new or missing elements. In all Mendeleev predicted the
existence of 10 new elements, of which seven were eventually discovered -- the other
three, atomic weights 45, 146 and 175 do not exist. He also was incorrect in suggesting
interchanged in position due to inaccurate atomic weights. Although these elements did
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In 1895 Lord Rayleigh reported the discovery of a new gaseous element named argon
which proved to be chemically inert. This element did not fit any of the known periodic
groups. In 1898, William Ramsey suggested that argon be placed into the periodic table
between chlorine and potassium in a family with helium, despite the fact that argon's
atomic weight was greater than that of potassium. This group was termed the "zero"
group due to the zero valency of the elements. Ramsey accurately predicted the future
Although Mendeleev's table demonstrated the periodic nature of the elements, it remained
for the discoveries of scientists of the 20th Century to explain why the properties of the
In 1911 Ernest Rutherford published studies of the scattering of alpha particles by heavy
atom nuclei which led to the determination of nuclear charge. He demonstrated that the
nuclear charge on a nucleus was proportional to the atomic weight of the element. Also in
1911, A. van den Broek in a series of two papers proposed that the atomic weight of an
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This charge, later termed the atomic number, could be used to number the elements
within the periodic table. In 1913, Henry Moseley (see a picture) published the results of
his measurements of the wavelengths of the x-ray spectral lines of a number of elements
which showed that the ordering of the wavelengths of the x-ray emissions of the elements
ordering of the elements by atomic number. With the discovery of isotopes of the
elements, it became apparent that atomic weight was not the significant player in the
periodic law as Mendeleev, Meyers and others had proposed, but rather, the properties of
The question of why the periodic law exists was answered as scientists developed an
understanding of the electronic structure of the elements beginning with Niels Bohr's
studies of the organization of electrons into shells through G.N. Lewis' (see a picture)
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The Modern Periodic Table
The last major changes to the periodic table resulted from Glenn Seaborg's work in the
middle of the 20th Century. Starting with his discovery of plutonium in 1940, he
discovered all the transuranic elements from 94 to 102. He reconfigured the periodic table
by placing the actinide series below the lanthanide series. In 1951, Seaborg was awarded
the Nobel Prize in chemistry for his work. Element 106 has been named seaborgium (Sg)
in his honor.
Although Dmitri Mendeleev is often considered the "father" of the periodic table, the
CONCLUSION
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With the development of modern quantum mechanical theories of electron
configurations within atoms, it became apparent that each row (or period) in the table
each period was the same length. However, because larger atoms have more electron sub-
shells, modern tables have progressively longer periods further down the table.
In the years that followed after Mendeleev published his periodic table, the gaps he left
were filled as chemists discovered more chemical elements. The last naturally occurring
1939. The periodic table has also grown with the addition of synthetic and transuranic
elements. The first transuranic element to be discovered was neptunium, which was
BIBILIOGRAPHY
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http://zebu.uoregon.edu/~imamura/122/images/periodic_table.gif
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_was_the_periodic_table_developed_by_scientist
http://web.fccj.org/~ethall/period/period.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Periodic_table
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