The periodic table turns 150 next year. Given that all scientific concepts are eventually refuted, the durability of the periodic table would suggest an almost transcendent quality that deserves greater scrutiny, especially as the United Nations has nominated 2019 as the year of the Periodic Table.
These days it seems that physics gives a fundamental explanation of the periodic table, although historically speaking it was the periodic table that gave rise to parts of atomic physics and quantum theory. I am thinking of Bohr’s 1913 model of the hydrogen atom and his extension of these ideas to the entire periodic table. The Bohr model can only cope quantitatively with one-electron systems, and yet using a mixture of chemical and spectroscopic intuition, Bohr succeeded in stating the electronic configurations of many different atoms.
Soon afterwards, Pauli postulated that electrons possessed a “classically non-describable two valuedness,” which at the hands of others became misleadingly known as “spin.” The electron does not really spin, but has an intrinsic magnetism that is not attributable to any mechanical motion whatsoever.
Remaining for a further moment on the physics of the periodic table, one should also mention Schrödinger, and the wave-nature of the electron. It is a remarkable fact that by solving his wave equation for the hydrogen atom, Schrödinger found that three quantum numbers were required to specify the possible solutions. When Pauli’s fourth quantum number was added to these three it became possible to explain the overall structure of the periodic table. As is well-known, the possible lengths of the periods in the table—namely 2, 8, 18 and 32—come from the possible ways to combine the four quantum numbers for each of the electrons in an atom. This in turn suggests a further vindication of Prout’s hypothesis, postulated over 100 years earlier, that all the atoms are composites of the hydrogen atom.
Now let me now turn to chemistry and pick up the story. A little after Prout proposed his simple idea, Döbereiner discovered the first few examples of triads of elements whereby one of a group of the three elements has the average atomic weight among the three. This suggested an underlying regularity that connected completely different atoms.
The very existence of triads rests on nothing but chemical periodicity, the notion that approximate repetitions occur after regular intervals in an ordered sequence of elements. For example, the reason why chlorine, bromine, and iodine form a triad is the fact that there are an equal number of elements situated between chlorine and bromine as there are between bromine and iodine. It could almost be said that Döbereiner discovered periodicity 50 or so years before Mendeleev.
Many questions continue to be debated concerning Mendeleev’s 1869 discovery of the chemical periodicity, including whether he was the only discoverer. My personal view is that discoveries occur in a gradual evolutionary fashion and that they frequently occur in many places almost at once. The periodic table was independently discovered by at least six individuals over a period of seven years between De Chancourtois’ telluric screw of 1862 and Mendeleev’s mature periodic table of 1869.
A surprising feature of the periodic table is the extent to which many aspects of it are still unresolved. There is little agreement as to what its optimal form should be, or indeed whether an optimal form even exists. The almost ubiquitous version is the 18-column wide table that displays the f-block elements as a kind of disconnected footnote. Some of us believe that the f-block is better shown incorporated into the main body of what now becomes a 32-column table.
A more radical alternative consists of the left-step table as first proposed in the 1920s by the French engineer Charles Janet. In this table, helium is relocated to the top of the alkaline earth elements on the basis of its having two electrons and so being analogous to elements that possess two outer-shell electrons. A second modification consists in moving the entire s-block, including helium, to the right hand edge of the table. This left-step table now shows every single period length as repeated, by contrast with the more traditional tables in which the first very short period of two elements appears just once. The new sequence of period lengths in the Janet table becomes, 2, 2, 8, 8, 18, 18, 32,32, a more mathematically regular sequence that is also more consistent with the Madelung rule that summarizes the order of orbital filling.
But the Madelung rule itself is a matter of some controversy since, for any given element, the rule only provides the order of filling for the s-block elements. On the other hand, the Madelung rule does genuinely yield the order of orbital filling as one moves through the periodic table, barring 20 or so anomalies starting with the atoms of chromium and copper.
The periodic table has endured many challenges in the course of its development. The first major crisis took place when the noble gases were first discovered at the turn of the 19th century. It first seemed as though there were no places to house these unexpected elements. Similarly, the sudden proliferation of isotopes seemed to pose a major problem for the periodic table. Both of these problems were successfully resolved. The noble gases were housed in a new column that is placed at the right hand edge of the table, at least in the conventional formats. In the case of isotopes, it was realized that the identity of elements was captured by the number of protons in the nuclei of their atoms or their atomic number. Separate isotopes of any particular element did not have to be separately displayed on the periodic table given that they share the same atomic number.
However, not all is well in the world of the periodic table. First, it is incomplete in a literal sense that new elements are continually being synthesized and taking their place at the table. Secondly, nobody knows where the periodic table will end. Some predict it will end with element 127 on the basis of a simple argument from relativity theory, while other more sophisticated calculations point to a higher value of 172 or perhaps 173.
Thirdly, and perhaps most serious of all, there is the looming threat of modifications to the behavior of atoms due to relativistic effects which cause some elements not to behave in the way that one might predict from the group that they fall in. If this trouble persists it may yet destroy the central tenet of the periodic table, namely the approximate repetition in chemical properties after regular intervals.
Featured image credit: “Air Force photo” by Margo Wright. Labeled for reuse with modification via Tinker Air Force Base.
No mention of the system never depicted accurately, or that the table is not in accordance with both parts of the Periodic Law. These are big gaps in your article – as in the table, but not in the single helix of the Alexander Arrangement of Elements – also not mentioned in the article.
“The electron does not really spin, but has an intrinsic magnetism that is not attributable to any mechanical motion whatsoever.” Although chemists might be aware of the periodic chart of the chemical elements for nearly 150 years, they should certainly be aware that the magnetic properties of the hydrogen atom, for instance, are indeed due to a mechanical motion, explicitly the rotational motion of the electron about the polar axis. If not conscious of Dirac’s relativistic wave equation and its consequences directly through that article, which involves a mathematical sophistication beyond typical chemists, they should be aware, through the accessible account by Richard E. Powell in the Journal of Chemical Education, exactly fifty years ago, that the circulation of charge about the polar axis in the hydrogen atom is an essential requisite of the stability of that isolated atom. Although an isolated proton or neutron possesses an intrinsic angular momentum attributable to the fact that either of these is a composite particle, in contrast the electron is a simple, if still mysterious, particle.
Richard E. Price obtained his doctorate under Eyring in Princeton University, a commendable pedigree, and proceeded to devote his academic career most notably to the teaching of general chemistry in the University of California at Berkeley, among other pursuits in which his varied interests and profound knowledge were admirable. One might wish that present commentators on the periodic chart of the chemical elements, and all instructors of freshman chemistry, possessed Powell’s understanding of the mathematical intricacies of chemistry sufficient to refute the conventional lack of wisdom regarding Bohr’s construction of electronic configurations of atoms.
Not only is there a circulation of electronic current about the proton in the hydrogen atom, but also the circulation can occur in both senses in the same state of the atom. The diagrams of these circulating currents freely accessible in article 1709.04338 at arxiv.org transcend Powell’s account, and present a second vista of the hydrogen atom that every chemist should appreciate.
For those interested, I have a 3-d model of the chemical element table. I have a short video on my website that explains it. The elements are in the form of pyramids that are made up of small pyramids door to door in layers. The upright pyramids represent protons, the inverted pyramids represent Electrons. The neutrons are between the protons and electrons in the structure of a tetrahedron. All of the elements contain the same atomic weight and number that each element is supposed to have.
Infinitestructure.com
In my preceding comment, the reference to Richard E. Price should, of course, be to Richard E. Powell.
I found the expression “all is not well in the world of the periodic table” to be somewhat curious.
It does not matter that new elements are still (very slowly) being synthesized. In a similar fashion, new particles have been added to the standard model of particle physics with no drama.
Apart from academic interest, it seems to me that it does not matter if we do not know where, or if, the table will end. Likewise, despite the fact that we do not know if there are a finite or infinite number of perfect numbers this does not signal that all is not well in the world of number theory.
For the superheavy elements I wonder if it will still be useful to compare their actual properties to the properties we would have expected to see. The approximate repetition in chemical properties may become obscured but at least we will have a benchmark to gauge the impact of relativistic effects, and see if their any remnants of periodicity. Alternatively there may be a basis to preserve some kind of periodicity even if this is at the expense of breaking the atomic number ordering sequence, as some extended periodic tables have explored e.g. Pyykkö’’s 2010 table.
Why translate Chancourtois’ “vis tellurique” as “telluric screw”? In English screws are not cylinders but narrow to a point at one end – when they are not lascivious. Chancourtois’ version was a “helix”.
And why do people still refer to Janet’s rule as Madelung’s, when Janet formulated it six years before Madelung? And why call it Aufbau, as if atoms were built up one proton and electron at a time, when we know that is not how nucleo-synthesis works.
Yet another error permeates Eric Scerri’s text. “Some predict it [the periodic chart of the chemical elements] will end with element 127.” The simple, and thereby incorrect, argument from relativity theory is based on the presumption that the speed of the electron in “the first Bohr orbit” — or something like that — is equal to a product alpha Z c, in which alpha denotes the so-called ‘fine-structure’ constant, equal to about 1/137, Z denotes the atomic number and c the speed of light in vacuo. According to the assumption that the latter speed represents an upper limit, Z=137 would correspondingly represent an upper limit on atomic number, i.e. not 127. This naive argument was first brought to my attention during a conversation with Dr. Glenn Seaborg when we met at a conference in Mexico City in 1975.
Johann Marinsek
PT manifests genesis of elements. Orbitals cannot provide the physical significance of the periodic table. Orbitals are imaginary. If orbitals are assumed to exist, then uranium fission manifests the need for the intervention of God. During fission there is a total pandemonium: protons, neutrons and electrons mixed. QM cannot causally explain that during the coming into being, the fission product Ba gets accurately (83 n + 56 p+ 56 e) out of the atomic chaos.
PT manifests a two-dimensional successive genesis of elements. Not orbitals provide the locations of elements but the ascending order of construction with building blocks like He, O, T, D. Genesis of elements provides locations of atoms and periodicity of
PT. Example: Na+He = Al+He = P+He = Cl+He = K. But K can also be fused vertically: Na+O = K. The change in the rows from Cl to K is a periodic step. Consecutive rows show constant mass differences between the rows.
The PT incorporates two lines of evolution: A succession of He-fusions that possess odd-numbered masses and a succession of He-fusions that possess even-numbered masses of the elements.
Prout´s atom model comprises hydrogen’s only. Neutrons are defective hydrogen’s due to decompositions of atoms. The Proutian atom should substitute the untenable Bohr model with its non-existing extra-nuclear electron shells.
See my ResearchGate article Perodic Table manifests genesis of elements