• Question: Why did they invent the periodic table?

    Asked by anon-317085 on 31 Mar 2022.
    • Photo: David Jackson

      David Jackson answered on 31 Mar 2022:

      The periodic table wasn’t really invented. Scientists were trying to make sense of all the elements they had found and get them into some order and they found that some reacted the same way so they put them together and it got built up from there.

    • Photo: Andrew Parrott

      Andrew Parrott answered on 31 Mar 2022:

      The periodic table was invented to make sense of behaviour of elements (atomic structure, melting points, reactivity, etc.). It comes about as elements have a periodic behaviour (hence the name of the table). Usually elements are grouped into rows (periods) and columns (groups) depending on atomic and electronic structure with hydrogen in the top left. But other formats can be used depending what information you want to display in a nice way (or to show different patterns – i.e., different periodic behaviour).

    • Photo: Veselina Georgieva

      Veselina Georgieva answered on 1 Apr 2022:

      I think you got good answers above.

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