Modern Periodic Table

The periodic table is a table of the chemical elements. the elements are arranged by order of atomic number. The table includes horizontal periods and vertical groups. Elements in the same group have some similar properties to each other. The periodic table is an organized piece of chemical information. The modern form is a brilliant achievement with major contributions from many famous chemists.

Antoine Lavoisier was born on august 26, 1743 after the French Revolution. He was also known as the "father of Chemistry". He was very interested in the sciences. Some of his amazing achievements included: introducing the metric system, creating calculations in chemistry, identifying Hydrogen and Oxygen, investigating combustion and the law of conservation of mass, he predicted silicon, and much more. Lavoisier was politically liberal and shared many of the ideas of the philosophies. He was deeply persuaded of the need for social reform in France. Because of this, he played an active part in the events preceding the French Revolution. Lavoisier conducted experiments that showed that respiration was essentially a slow combustion of organic material using inhaled oxygen. Lavoisier's explanation of combustion disproved the phlogiston theory, which postulated that materials released a substance called phlogiston when they burned.

John Newlands was born on November 26,1837. John Newland created the law of octaves. The law of octaves is just showing the similar properties of every eighth element according to their atomic mass. He predicted the existence of germanium. He received the Davy medal for his discovery for the periodic table. He arranged the 62 elements known then in a table based on the increasing order of their atomic number. While the periodicity was good, his grouping of elements appeared flawed. In his table iron, existed in the same group as oxygen and sulphur, two non metals.

Lothar Newlands made a chart that plotted atomic volumes against atomic weight. He figured that since the number of atoms in each amount was the same, the volumes measured must represent the relative volumes of the individual atoms. By plotting those volumes against the atomic weights you can see that there is a pattern. An important outlook that Lorthar Meyer made was the change in length of that repeating pattern. Lorthar concluded that there is repeating periodicity of the atomic volume, but the periods changed in size.

Dmitri Medeleev came up with a periodic table of the elements close to the one used today. Mendeleev found that if you arrange the elements in order of increasing atomic mass, their chemical properties demonstrate definite trends. This lead to his periodic table,