Write your abstract here. PART III - Sulfur Came Before Oxygen Essential to Our Life - "Periodic Table of
Elements".
The
Periodic Table of
Elements, clearly uses "elements" as the data to be
placed in the table. This is not as
straight forward as might seem likely. "Hydrogen" for instance is one of
the elements, as is "Sulfur" but in fact "Hydrogen" can
exist with one electron around the atom or zero electrons. It has a different name for each state, but
generally it is still
considered "Hydrogen." However, for some chemists the differences
between "Elements" with one or two more or less electrons different
from "Normal"
was considered so important that they had trouble agreeing on how to define an
"Element." But if the definition
of "Element" caused controversy, the definition of "Periodic"
caused much more. "Periodic"
means, generally, "Regular" or in some rational "Pattern."
"Periodic Table of Elements" has usually meant the order based on the
number of protons in the center of the atom of the substance. Since Hydrogen is an atom with ONE proton, it
was assigned an "Order" of Atomic Number One. Since Helium is an atom with TWO protons in
the center of the atom, it was given the number of Atomic Number Two. The chemist given most credit for creating the
first Periodic Table of Elements was the Russian Dmitrii I. Mendeleev. The Periodic "law" of
chemistry recognizes that many properties of the chemical elements are periodic
functions of their atomic number (the number of protons within the element''s
atomic nucleus). The Periodic Table is an arrangement of the chemical
elements ordered by atomic number in columns (groups) and rows (periods)
presented so as to emphasize their periodic properties.
This table shows the
various elements with different colors --- the colors portray an aspect of the
pattern. For instance, you can see that some of the cells above are green, some
are yellow. The green cells indicate that the element listed in that cell is
called a "non metal" while the yellow cells are classified as the
adjacent image displays: "Alkaline Earth Metals." These terms, themselves, are more confusing
than need be for this simplified presentation -- but the essence here is that
some Chemists felt that whether an element was "acidic" in nature or
"alkaline" in nature was so important that the Periodic Table of
Elements should present that information as part of the pattern. "Other" tables of the same elements
have other patterns -- depending on what characteristic of the element is
considered most important for the purpose of that Table. There were more than 1000 different forms of
the Periodic Table of Elements -- some now completely discarded by most
scientists -- but all of which, at one time or another, were considered THE
table by someone. But some of the
elements exist at normal temperatures as gases while others are liquids and
some are solids. So, it might also be
logical to develop a pattern based on which of these three states (gas, liquid
or solid) is the usual state for this substance. You might get into a controversy about
substances which were either gas or liquid at different "Normal"
temperatures - and of course this was one of the problems with using the "Gas/Liquid/Solid"
pattern of data presentation. In addition
to definitions for the items placed in a table, and the description of the
Pattern for the data, there could certainly be an "Intended Use" of
the table that might become an important part of the table and affect the
definition of data terms and/or the definition of the pattern.
This
table shows the various elements with different colo--- the colors portray
an aspect of the pattern. For instance, you can see that some of the cells
above are green, some are yellow. The green cells indicate that the element
listed in that cell is called a "non metal" while the yellow cells
are classified as the adjacent image displays: "Alkaline Earth
Metals." These terms, themselves, are more confusing than need be for this
simplified presentation -- but the essence here is that some Chemists felt that
whether an element was "acidic" in nature or "alkaline" in
nature was so important that the Periodic Table of Elements should present that
information as part of the pattern. "Other" tables of the same elements
have other patterns -- depending on what characteristic of the element is
considered most important for the purpose of that Table. There were more than 1000 different forms of
the Periodic Table of Elements -- some now completely discarded by most
scientists -- but all of which, at one time or another, were considered THE
table by someone. But some of the
elements exist at normal temperatures as gases while others are liquids and
some are solids. So, it might also be
logical to develop a pattern based on which of these three states (gas, liquid
or solid) is the usual state for this substance. You might get into a controversy about
substances which were either gas or liquid at different "Normal"
temperatures - and of course this was one of the problems with using the "Gas/Liquid/Solid"
pattern of data presentation. Because of limited space, please read continuation in PART IV - Sulfur Came Before Oxygen Essential to Our Life - "Periodic Table of Elements".