The Periodic Table:Highlights from theHistory of an Icon

Carmen J. Giunta Le Moyne College

AbstractThe periodic table is an icon of chemistry—one of

the few visual images that makes anyone who sees it think of chemistry. The periodic table has even branched out beyond its chemical roots as an arrangement for vegetables, desserts, and the like. Back to chemistry: where did it come from? When? How? What chemistry had to be known before the table could be discovered? (For that matter, was it discovered or invented?) These are just a few of the questions to be touched on in a whirlwind tour of the history of the periodic table from its devising to the present, including various shapes and sizes it has assumed over the years.

Periodic Table of Desserts

P. T. with Cupcakes

Periodic

Table

of the Elementssilvercarbon

telluriumargon

copper

plutonium

Periodic properties

Electronegativity

Periodic properties

Molar volume

Periodic properties

Ionization energy

Periodic properties

Julius Lothar Meyer, Annalen der Chemie, Supplementband 7, 354 (1870)

Prerequisites• concept/definition of element• lists of elements• properties of elements• how to order elements (atomic weights)• enough elements for patterns to emerge

Prerequisites: Boyle

Robert Boyle, The Sceptical Chymist

Prerequisites: Lavoisier

Prerequisites: Dalton

John Dalton and his atomic weights

Prerequisites: Cannizzaro

Stanislao Cannizzaro; translation of his Sunto (1858)

Triads

Johann Döbereiner and his triads (1829)

Li

Na

KCa

Sr

Ba

S

Se

Te

Cl

Br

I

1862: Vis Tellurique

Alexandre-ÉmileBéguyer de Chancourtois

Law of Octaves: 1865

John Newlands and his law of octaves

Law of Octaves

Julius Lothar Meyer

Julius Lothar Meyer’s partial table (1864)

Julius Lothar Meyer

1870 table

Dmitrii Mendeleev

Dmitrii Mendeleev (1869)

Dmitrii Mendeleev (1871)

After Mendeleev

About that new column

About that new column

Ramsay,Gases of the Atmosphere (1896)

•Argon discovered 1894•“molecular” weight = 39.9•monatomic•no room between K & Ca

•Helium discovered 1895•Ramsay places Ar in new group after Cl & before K•Ramsay predicts other monatomic inert gases•Ramsay & Travers find Ne, Kr, Xe in 1898

Atomicnumber

Henry Moseley &|his X-ray spectral data

Glenn Seaborg

Early 20th Century

Standard modern table

Other arrangements

Left-step table (Charles Janet, 1928)

Other arrangements

Spiral table (after Edgar Longman, 1951)

Other arrangementsPhilip Stewart

Other arrangements

Periodic roller coaster (William Crookes, 1898)

Other arrangements

Periodic table table (Theodore Gray, 1951)

Resources•Carmen Giunta, Classic Chemistry website, http://web.lemoyne.edu/giunta/•Mark Leach, INTERNET Database of Periodic Tables, http://www.meta-synthesis.com/webbook/35_pt/pt_database.php?Button=All•Eric R. Scerri, The Periodic Table: Its Story and its Significance (2007) & A Tale of Seven Elements (2013)•J. W. van Spronsen, The Periodic System of Chemical Elements: a History of the First Hundred Years (1969)