Essay On The Periodic Table

779 Words2 Pages

The periodic table is an identifiable scientific resource that is used to display the elements that make up all matter. Elements are the simplest matter and cannot be broken down into purer substances using chemical methods . The periodic table shows all elements and there are over 100. The discovery of the periodic table was a pinnacle in science as it categorizes the elements by their various chemical and physical properties.

Even in ancient times, people had always been aware of elements like gold, silver and copper. In 350 BCE, Aristotle had a theory that all matter was made up of the elements of earth, fire, air and water . He believed that lighter objects had less earth than heaver objects. He even spoke of a 5th substance, aether, a weightless and incorruptible substance that makes up the sun, moon, planet and stars .

Much Later, in 1649, Hennig Brand discovered the first element, phosphorus, as he tried to make a philosopher’s stone while experimenting with distilled human urine. This got people thinking about which substances are elements. In 1661, Boyle defined an element as "a substance that cannot be broken down into a simpler substance by a chemical reaction". This definition was used until subatomic particles were discovered .

In the 1700’s, Antoine Lavoiser wrote the first extensive list of elements and categorized them into metals and non-metals . Johann Wolfgang Döbereiner and Alexandre-Emile Béguyer de Chancourtois also tried to classify the elements in the mid 1800’s but were not extremely successful. Döbereiner classified elements into triads with elements with similar properties while Béguyer de Chancourtoiswas the first to notice that when elements are arranged by their atomic weights, groups of elements ...

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...he same regardless of the type of atom. He then concluded that atoms consist of tiny, negatively charged particles. He, like Chadwick, received a Nobel prize for his work in 1906 .

John Dalton was another English scientist to make significant contributions to science. Dalton was born in 1766 and spent a lot of his life studying the air and gases. This led him to make discover that chemical combinations consist of the interaction of atoms. He published his thoughts on atoms in 1805 . Dalton’s atomic theory states that all matter is made of atoms, atoms are indivisible and indestructible, all atoms of a given element are identical is mass and properties, compounds are formed by a combination of two or more different kinds of atoms and that a chemical reaction is a rearrangement of atoms . This atomic theory is known as a foundation for many discoveries in chemistry.

Life of John Dalton
564 Words | 2 Pages
This showed that dissolved gases were mechanically mixed with the water and weren?t mixed naturally. But in 1803 it was found that this depended on the weight of the individual particles of the gas or atoms. By assuming the particles were the same size, Dalton was able to develop the idea of atomic weights. In 1803 this theory was finalised and stated that (1) all matter is made up of the smallest possible particles termed atoms, (2) atoms of a given element have unique characteristics and weight, and (3) three types of atoms exist: simple (elements), compound (simple molecules), and complex (complex molecules).
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Dalton's Atomic Theory Essay
422 Words | 1 Pages
Dalton’s atomic theory, which stated “the atoms were tiny, indivisible, indestructible particles” (Bender), differed drastically from that of the Greeks’ in that it “wasn’t just a philosophical statement that there are atoms because there must be atoms” (Bender). Although Aristotle believed that there are four terrestrial elements, earth, water, air, and fire, Democratus believed that “a piece of a substance can be divided into smaller pieces of that substance until we get down to a fundamental level at which you can’t divide the substance up and still have pieces of that substance” (“Atoms”). Aristotle’s theory was popular, but incorrect; Democratus’s was closer to our current theory, yet he remained relatively unpopular and obscure. This demonstrates of the key way in which a personal point of view can, in fact, retard the pursuit of knowledge. The scientist with the better oratory abilities has his theories more widely accepted. Dalton’s own theory, which extrapolated upon four basic
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General Periodicity
932 Words | 2 Pages
Instead, early forms of the periodic table relied on using the physical properties of the elements known at that time. It must have been a great revelation to the chemists from the early part of this century to realise that there really was such a strong correlation between chemical properties of the elements and their physical structure. The periodic table. An example of a periodic table is given below : [IMAGE]
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Cavendish's Role In The Scientific Revolution
851 Words | 2 Pages
She was not the type to base her idea of writings off others. Cavendish's first anthology, Poems, and Fancies, included the earliest version of her ideas on natural philosophy. Although English atomic theory in the seventeenth century attempted to explain all natural phenomena as matter in motion, in Cavendish's philosophy all atoms contained the same amount of matter but differed in size and shape; thus, earth atoms were square, water particles were round, atoms of air were long, and fire atoms were sharp. This led to Cavendish’s theory on disease, and how it was due to fighting between different atoms or there was too many one type of atom shape. However, Cavendish ended up rejecting her ideas on the theory of atoms. By 1665, when she published Philosophical and Physical Opinions, she had decided that if atoms were "Animated Matter," then they would have "Free-will and Liberty" and thus would always be at in a battle with one another and unable to cooperate in the creation of complex organisms and minerals. She had sent copies of her new ideas to the most famous scientists and celebrities of the time period. Although other philosophers had different theories, Cavendish continued to view all matter as composed of one material (Clairhout and Jung).
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Essay On The Periodic Table
594 Words | 2 Pages
The Atomic Theory began in roughly 400BC with Democritus in Ancient Greece and is universally believed to be correct today. Democritus who was born in 460 BC and died 370 BC and is known as the father of modern science. Democritus proclaimed that everything is made up of atoms. He continued his theory to say that atoms will always be in motion, between atoms there is empty space, atoms are unbreakable, there are an infinite number of atoms all different sizes and shapes. He also said that iron atoms are solid and strong and have hooks to lock them together, water atoms are smooth and slippery, salt atoms have sharp jagged edges because of its taste and air atoms are light and spiralling.
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History of the Periodic Table
672 Words | 2 Pages
Things are very different from each other, and can be broken down into small groups inside itself, which was then noticed early by people, and Greek thinkers, about 400BC. Which just happened to use words like "element', and `atom' to describe the many different parts and even the smallest parts of matter. These ideas were around for over 2000 years while ideas such as `Elements' of Earth, Fire, Air, and Water to explain `world stuff' came and went. Much later, Boyle, an experimenter like Galileo and Bacon, was influenced much by Democritus, Gassendi, and Descartes, which lent much important weight to the atomic theory of matter in the 1600s. Although it was Lavoisier who had divided the very few elements known in the 1700's into four different classes, and then John Dalton made atoms even more believable, telling everyone that the mass of an atom was it's most important property. Then in the early 1800's Dobereiner noted that the similar elements often had relative atomic masses, and DeChancourtois made a cylindrical table of elements to display the periodic reoccurrence of properties. Cannizaro then determined atomic weights for the 60 or so elements known in the 1860s, and then a table was arranged by Newlands, with the many elements given a serial number in order of their atomic weights, of course beginning with Hydrogen. That made it clear that "the eighth element, starting from a given one, is a kind of a repeat of the first", which Newlands called the Law of Octaves.
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Alchemy -the Predecessor Of Modern Chemistry
659 Words | 2 Pages
The writings of some Greek philosophers may be considered to be among the very first chemical theories, such as the theory that all things are composed of air, earth, fire, and water. Each of these were represented by different elements, such as sulfur, salt, mercury, and, ideally, gold. Other ideas held by alchemists were that each of the known elements were represented by heavenly bodies. Gold was earth's representation of the sun, silver for the moon, mercury for the planet Mercury, copper for Venus, iron for Mars, tin for Jupiter, and lead for Saturn.
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The Higgs Boson Particle
1109 Words | 3 Pages
The next big step in the discovery of the atom was the scientific test that proved the existence of the atom. After the discovery of the atom we had the discovery of subatomic particles. With the discovery of the subatomic particles came the research, which came from experiments that were made to find out more about the subatomic particles. This research is how we uncovered that most of the weight of an atom is from its nucleus. With the gold foil experiment, tested by Ernest Rutherford, he discovered the existence of the positively charged nucleus. He proved this when the experiment was happening, a small fraction of the photons th...
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The Periodic Kingdom Summary
2102 Words | 5 Pages
Copper, though known for millennia, takes its name, via the Latin Cuprum, from Cyprus, where much was found” (59). He then also talk about some of the elements colors for example chlorine a pale yellow-green gas and iodine, which is a violet solid. He then went on talking about how hydrogen was the first element to be formed and soon as the island of hydrogen appeared, the Northerner Cape of Helium appeared. After these two elements were formed millions of years passed everything remained the same and no elements were formed. Then later on the formation of stars opened up new opportunities and lithium and beryllium were formed.
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The Periodic Table In The 1700's
614 Words | 2 Pages
Doberier (1780-1849) published a classification system. In the system he created, the elements known were grouped into triads. He began to place all these elements by similar properties. Dmitri Mendeleev’s a Russian chemist and teacher, also played a big role in the creation of our now periodic table. Mendeleev in 1869 created a table of elements, and later that year another German chemist, Lothar Meyer, published a very similar table; fortunately Mendeleev was given more credit, for he had it done first and was better at proving his point about the periodic table.
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Helium: Quintessential Element
622 Words | 2 Pages
All elements act on this premise; their subatomic structure affects the element both chemically and psychically. The true meaning of an “element” was not completely understood until the turn of the 19th century; it was the noble gasses that were isolated as the perfect examples of elements in
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Chemistry And Religion Essay
1035 Words | 3 Pages
The time when metals were recorded and discovered by King Hammurabi, the sixth king of First Babylonian. In the 430 BC, Democritus, Ancient Greek philosophy proclaimed the atom, being the simplest unit of matter. The time of 300 BC, Aristotle, Ancient Greek philosopher declared that all matter was made up with 4 elements, which are: Fire, Water, Air and Earth. Between the 300 BC and 300 AD the alchemists, who study alchemy proved the Aristotle idea against the change of cheap metal to gold. In the 1700s, Johann J. Beecher developed the Phlogiston Theory the substance when burned, the phlogiston is added from the air to flame the burning object.
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John Dalton
509 Words | 2 Pages
Dalton was the first person to develop a scientific atom theory, the ancient Greeks had ideas about the atom but could not prove it scientifically.
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Isomerism Essay
1706 Words | 4 Pages
The discovery of other more simple concepts associated with isomerism can be dated back to the late 1700s, when a breakthrough in the isolation of a few pure substances occurred. This work was accredited to Carl Wilhelm Scheele, a Swedish-German pharmaceutical chemist, who was able to isolate pure substances that came from the study of animal and vegetable chemistry. His accomplishments lead to the discovery of a variety of organic compounds, each with its own elemental composition. As the years went by and more organic compounds were discovered, several different compounds with the same elemental composition were identified. It was not however, until 1830 that Thomas Thomson, a Scottish chemist and mineralogist from the University of Edinburgh whose work contributed to the expansion of the Dalton atomic theory, brought the question of this concept to the world’s attention. After studying and observing an earlier scientist’s, who went by the name of Berzelius who is one of the founders of modern ...
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Atomic Energy
1685 Words | 4 Pages
Scientists from earlier times helped influence the discoveries that lead to the development of atomic energy. In the late 1800’s, Dalton created the Atomic Theory which explains atoms, elements and compounds (Henderson 1). This was important to the study of and understanding of atoms to future scientists. The Atomic Theory was a list of scientific laws regarding atoms and their potential abilities. Roentagen, used Dalton’s findings and discovered x-rays which could pass through solid objects (Henderson 1). Although he did not discover radiation from the x-rays, he did help lay the foundations for electromagnetic waves. Shortly after Roentagen’s findings, J.J. Thompson discovered the electron which was responsible for defining the atom’s characteristics (Henderson 2). The electron helped scientists uncover why an atom responds to reactions the way it does and how it received its “personality”. Dalton’s, Roentagen’s and Thompson’s findings helped guide other scientists to discovering the uses of atomic energy and reactions. Such applications were discovered in the early 1900’s by using Einstein’s equation, which stated that if a chain reaction occurred, cheap, reliable energy could b...
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Essay On The Periodic Table

Life of John Dalton

Dalton's Atomic Theory Essay

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