A NEW LOOK AT THE PERIODIC TABLE

Abstract

As science advances, its laws become fewer but of greater scope. In this respect the Periodic Law, which is the basis of the Periodic Table, represents a major step in the progress of chemistry — it affords the natural classification of the elements. The Periodic Table was developed by chemists more than one hundred years ago as a correlation for the properties of the elements. With the discovery of the internal structure of the atom, it became recognized by physicists as a natural law. When the crystalline structure of solids was studied, the nature of the chemical bonds was understood, and the theory of metals was put forward, it became an essential tool not only for chemists and physicists, but for metallurgists as well. Of the 87 naturally occurring elements, 63, i.e., about three fourth are described as metals , 16 as nonmetals , and 9 as metalloids . Chemists should abandon numbering the groups in the Periodic Table and to give descriptive names instead.