Periodic Table: History and Organization

not the real periodic table.... 

        When scientists started to discover lots of elements, many of them noticed that there was no particular order. Some, like Bezalius, tried to accomplish some order. He was obsessed with the order of the elements. He set out to measure every known elements atomic weight, which was difficult. At the same time he did this, other scientists around the world were trying to do the same thing, but they all came up with different results. So Dobereiner decided that there needed to be another way. He decided to sort the elements by the chemical properties instead of the weights. That sort of worked out but was not perfect. So then Cannizaro worked with gases instead of atomic weights. And he used their densities to sort the elements. in 1863, Newland tried to tell everyone about this Law of Octaves, which was really accurate, but all the scientists at the first chemistry convention laughed at his idea. Mendeleev officially discovered the periodic table after a lot of work with 'chemical solitare.' He had the brilliant idea to use both atomic weight and reactions, which no one else had done before. He also left spaces blank for undiscovered elements. Then after the protons were discovered, he figured out how to align the table with the atomic number as well, it was really similar to Mendeleev's but more exact.

     Mendeleev probably would not have had the time in today's society to sit around for three days of solitude to figure out the periodic table. We definitely would not have a good periodic table if he had to make it with today's distractions! In my opinion, the environment for students is really filled with distractions. Even just fifty years ago people probably got more done with out phones and technology. It is really becoming a problem when my biggest pet peeve is when people are staring at their iphone while someone else is talking to them. I am glad that Mendeleev didn't have all these crazy distractions! YAY!(Option 3)