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October 15, 2002
A: FROM MENTOR NICOLE PERSKY:
Awsome question Kelly!
The periodic table was such an important
invention, and so useful for the future of chemistry.
Some associations between the elements were
evident to the average nineteenth century
chemist(such as those between the alkali metals)
but others would not have been that obvious (such as
putting nitrogen and bismuth in the same group).
A major step in understanding the
chemical elements periodically came with the
observation that there was a connection between group
properties and atomic masses. By arranging the first
17 known elements, in order of increasing atomic mass
repetative sequences became apparent, and a rough
periodic table was formed. I don't know who formed
this rough table.
But to answer your question, in 1869 and 1870 more
complete periodic tables were constructed and
introduced independently by the German chemist Lothar
Meyer and by the Russian Dmitri Mendeleev.
Mendeleev's table was more advanced and useful, and
for these reasons I think he is the generally accepted
inventor of the periodic table.
check out this cool site on Mendeleev:
http://www.aip.org/history/curie/periodic.htm
also follow the link on the bottom of that page that
says "page on the periodic table" to a nice site
with other cool links about the periodic table.
Also, for a comic book periodic table of the elements,
check out:
http://www.uky.edu/Projects/Chemcomics/
All the information in the first couple paragraphs of
this email I got from the textbook entitled
Chemistry, Science of Change. By Oxtoby, Nachtrieb,
and Freeman. Second Edition. pp.76-77
October 15, 2002
A: FROM MENTOR AIMEE WILLOZ.
Here's some information I came up with when I did a Google
search:
"The rectangular periodic table is familiar to anybody
who has ever been in
a science laboratory or classroom. This ingenious functional
grouping of
the chemical elements was created by several European scientists
in the
decade of the 1860's. In 1863, a 44 year old French geologist,
A. E.
Béguyer de Chancourtois created a list of the elements
arranged by
increasing atomic weight. The list was wrapped around a cylinder
so that
several sets of similar elements lined up, creating the first
geometric
representation of the periodic law.
In England, 32 year old analytical chemist John A. R. Newlands
was also
wrapping the elements, noting that chemical groups repeated
every eight
elements. He named this the octave rule, and compared it to
a musical
scale. Some less observant members of the English Chemical
Society
considered this absurd, so his work was ignored for years.
Chemists Dmitrii I. Mendeleev, a Russian, and German Lothar
Meyer were
working independently in 1868 and 1869 on the arrangement
of elements into
seven columns, corresponding to various chemical and physical
properties.
Their tables were similar - they acknowledged each other's
work - the
differences are subtle but important: Meyer's table was an
accurate (for
the time) accounting of the known facts about each element,
such as melting
point and atomic volume. The table clearly showed the existence
of periodic
chemical families. In 1870 Meyer's table and description of
the periodic
law was published in Liebig's Annalen.
A year earlier however, the 35 year old Mendeleev presented
a much bolder
and scientifically useful table. His paper, On the Relation
of the
Properties to the Atomic Weights of the Elements, was enthusiastically
received by the Russian Chemical Society. In it, the periodic
relationship
between chemical groups, that is, elements with a similar
stoichiometry of
reaction, is clearly illustrated. In a scientific triumph,
gaps in the
table accurately predicted undiscovered elements.
Although it is nearly 130 years old, Mendeleev's table differs
little from
the charts on the walls of laboratories today. The insight
obtained in that
productive decade resulted in a tool that furthers understanding
and eases
the use of chemistry in every laboratory in the world."
The above information came from this website:
http://chemlab.pc.maricopa.edu/periodic/about.html#history
Here are some other sites you can look at:
http://chemlab.pc.maricopa.edu/periodic/about.html
http://periodictable.com/pages/AAE_History.html
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