Periodic Table

4 Pages 1002 Words

Early chemistry was not as complicated as it appears now, in our modern era. In the beginning the idea of various elements was limited, such that Aristotle believed only in the primary substances of fire, earth, air and water. As science evolved and became more complex, ancient thinkers like Democritus realized that matter was composed of tiny particles called atoms; and then, Lucretuis further explained that the properties of these atoms depended on their physical behavior and motion. With the ever expanding explanations that stemmed from chemistry and its processes, the idea of various elements and the number of elements grew. Scientist, then, began to notice trends and patterns in properties of these elements, so they tried to come up with some system of classification. Thus, we get the periodic table, which is a functional grouping of chemical elements. Today’s modern table is arranged from left to right, top to bottom, in order of increasing atomic number.
Considered the ‘father of modern chemistry,’ Antoine Laurent Lavoisier, a French chemist, explained the concept of an element by describing it as a simple substance that could not be broken down by any known method of chemical analysis. He was the first to recognize true elements and to use systematic names for them. In 1789, Lavoisier published the first list of all known chemical elements.
John Dalton, a British chemist, began experimenting with different elements and compounds. Because different chemicals weighed differently proportionally, Dalton discovered the difference between elements and compounds, and that the atoms of one element were alike, but differ from those of another element. This discovery prompted the idea of weighing the elements, and configuring the masses of each one, noticing the variation. So, Dalton set up a table of atomic masses (many of which weren’t very accurate) and published them in his book entitled A New System of Chemical Ph...