Location via proxy:   [ UP ]  
[Report a bug]   [Manage cookies]                

Scientist: The Contributions of The in The Development of The Periodic

Download as docx, pdf, or txt
Download as docx, pdf, or txt
You are on page 1of 16

CHEMISTRY…

THE CONTRIBUTIONS OF THE


SCIENTIST IN THE
DEVELOPMENT OF THE PERIODIC
TABLE

NAME: SITI NUR FARHANA AB HAMID

CLASS: 4 INTELEK

TEACHER: PN AZLIZA MUSA

1
INTRODUCTION

2
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

developed to explain chemical behavior.

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

chemistry, physics, biology, and engineering, especially chemical engineering. The

current standard table contains 118 elements as of March 2010 (elements 1–118).

Contribution of Scientist to the Historical Development of the Periodic Table

3
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.

- Groups with similar chemical properties were called Triads.

- Triad system was confined to some elements only.


3. John Newlands - Elements were arranged in ascending atomic mass.

- Law of Octaves because similar chemical properties were repeated at every

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)

- Plotted graph for the atomic volume against atomic mass.

- Found that elements with similar chemical properties were positioned at

equivalent places along the curve.


5. Mendeleev - Elements were arranged in ascending order of increasing atomic mass.

- Elements with similar chemical properties were in the same group.

- Empty spaces were allocated for elements yet to be discovered.

- Contributor to the formation of the modern periodic Table.


6. Henry Moseley - Classified concepts of proton number and elements in ascending order of

increasing proton number.

- Contributor to the formation of the modern Periodic Table.

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

4
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,

scientists began to recognize patterns in properties and began to develop classification

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

5
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.

First Attempts At Designing a Periodic Table

If a periodic table is regarded as an ordering of the chemical elements demonstrating the

periodicity of chemical and physical properties, credit for the first periodic table

(published in 1862) probably should be given to a French geologist, A.E.Beguyer de

Chancourtois. De Chancourtois transcribed a list of the elements positioned on a cylinder

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

properties of numbers." De Chancourtois was first to recognize that elemental properties

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

compounds in addition to elements.

Law of Octaves

6
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

element following it in the table.

Who Is The Father of the Periodic Table?

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

independently of one another. Meyer's 1864 textbook included a rather abbreviated

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

valence chages as a function of atomic weight. In 1868, Meyer constructed an extended

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

7
Siberian town of Tobol'sk where his father was a teacher of Russian literature and

philosophy (portrait by Ilyia Repin). Mendeleev was not considered an outstanding

student in his early education partly due to his dislike of the classical languages that were

an important educational requirement at the time even though he showed prowess in

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

University of Moscow and St. Petersburg University because of his provincial

background and unexceptional academic background, he finally earned a place at the

Main Pedagogical Institute (St. Petersburg Institute). Upon graduation, Mendeleev took a

position teaching science in a gymnasium. After a time as a teacher, he was admitted to

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

position as professor of chemistry at St. Petersburg University, a position he retained

until 1890.

While writing a textbook on systematic inorganic chemistry, Principles of Chemistry,

which appeared in thirteen editions the last being in 1947, Mendeleev organized his

8
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.

9
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

network of vertical, horizontal, and diagonal relationships. In 1906, Mendeleev came

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.)

10
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

elements which he called eka-aluminum, eka-boron, and eka-silicon. The elements

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

that the element pairs of argon-potassium, cobalt-nickel and tellurium-iodine should be

interchanged in position due to inaccurate atomic weights. Although these elements did

need to be interchanged, it was because of a flaw in the reasoning that periodicity is a

function of atomic weight.

Discovery of the Noble Gases

11
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

discovery and properties neon.

Atomic Structure and the Periodic Table

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

elements recur periodically.

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

element was approximately equal to the charge on an atom.

12
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

coincided with the

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 elements varied periodically with atomic number.

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)

discoveries of bonding electron pairs.

13
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

work of many scientists contributed to its present form.

CONCLUSION

14
With the development of modern quantum mechanical theories of electron

configurations within atoms, it became apparent that each row (or period) in the table

corresponded to the filling of a quantum shell of electrons. In Mendeleev's original 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

element to be discovered was francium (referred to by Mendeleev as eka-caesium) in

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

formed by bombarding uranium with neutrons in a cyclotron in 1939.

BIBILIOGRAPHY

15
 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

16

You might also like