The Periodic Table

General Chemistry
The Periodic Table

Ayaz Mammadov PhD in chemistry
Development of the Periodic Table
In the nineteenth century, when chemists had only a vague idea of atoms
and molecules and did not know of the existence of electrons and
protons, they devised the periodic table using their knowledge of atomic
masses. Accurate measurements of the atomic masses of many elements
had already been made. Arranging elements according to their atomic
masses in a periodic table seemed logical to chemists, who felt that
chemical behavior should somehow be related to atomic mass. In 1864
the English chemist John Newlands noticed that when the known
elements were arranged in order of atomic mass, every eighth element
had similar properties. Newlands referred to this peculiar relationship as
the law of octaves. However, this “law” turned out to be inadequate for
elements beyond calcium, and Newlands’s work was not accepted by the
scientific community.
Five years later the Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleev and the German
chemist Lothar Meyer independently proposed a much more extensive
tabulation of the elements, based on the regular, periodic recurrence of
properties. Mendeleev’s classification was a great improvement over
Newlands’s for two reasons. First, it grouped the elements together more
accurately, according to their properties. Equally important, it made
possible the prediction of the properties of several elements that had not
yet been discovered. For example, Mendeleev proposed the existence of an
unknown element that he called eka-aluminum. (Eka is a Sanskrit word
meaning “first”; thus, ekaaluminum would be the first element under
aluminum in the same group.) When gallium was discovered 4 years later,
its properties closely matched the predicted properties of eka-aluminum as
shown here.
Nevertheless, the early versions of the periodic table had some glaring
inconsistencies. For example, the atomic mass of argon (39.95 amu) is
greater than that of potassium (39.10 amu). If elements were arranged
solely according to increasing atomic mass, argon would appear in the
position occupied by potassium in our modern periodic table (see the
inside front cover). This and other discrepancies suggested that some
fundamental property other than atomic mass is the basis of the
observed periodicity. This property turned out to be associated with
atomic number. The atomic number of argon is 18 and that of
potassium is 19, so potassium should follow argon in the periodic table.
Periodic Classification of the Elements
Figure shows the periodic table together with the outermost ground-
state electron configurations of the elements. Referring to Figure, the
representative elements (also called main group elements) are the
elements in Groups 1A through 7A, all of which have incompletely
filled s or p subshells of the highest principal quantum number. With
the exception of helium, the noble gases (the Group 8A elements) all
have a completely filled p subshell. The transition metals are the
elements in Groups 1B and 3B through 8B, which have incompletely
filled d subshells or readily produce cations with incompletely filled d
subshells. (These metals are sometimes referred to as the d-block
transition elements.) The Group 2B elements are Zn, Cd, and Hg,
which are neither representative elements nor transition metals. The
lanthanides and actinides are sometimes called f-block transition
elements because they have incompletely filled f subshells.
A clear pattern emerges when we examine the electron configurations of the
elements in a particular group. The electron configurations for Groups 1A and
2A elements are shown in Table. We see that all members of the Group 1A
alkali metals have similar outer electron configurations; each has a noble gas
core and an ns1 configuration of the outer electron. Similarly, the Group 2A
alkaline earth metals have a noble gas core and an ns2 configuration of the
outer electrons. The outer electrons of an atom, which are those involved in
chemical bonding, are often called the valence electrons. Having the same
number of valence electrons accounts for similarities in chemical behavior
among the elements within each of these groups. This observation holds true
also for the halogens (the Group 7A elements), which have outer electron
configurations of ns2np5 and exhibit very similar properties. As a group, the
noble gases behave very similarly. With the exception of krypton and xenon,
these elements are totally inert chemically. The reason is that these elements all
have completely filled outer ns2np6 subshells, a condition that represents great
stability.
Electron Configurations of Cations and Anions
Because many ionic compounds are made up of monatomic anions

and/or cations, it is helpful to know how to write the electron
configurations of these ionic species. The procedure for writing the
electron configurations of ions requires only a slight extension of the
method used for neutral atoms. We will group the ions in two categories
for discussion.
Ions Derived from Representative Elements
Ions, or atoms and ions, that have the same number of electrons, and hence the
same ground-state electron configuration, are said to be isoelectronic. Thus, H-
and He are isoelectronic; F-, Na+, and Ne are isoelectronic; and so on.
Atomic Radius
A number of physical properties, including density, melting point, and

boiling point, are related to the sizes of atoms.The electron density in an
atom extends far beyond the nucleus, but we normally think of atomic
size as the volume containing about 90 percent of the total electron
density around the nucleus. When we must be even more specific, we
define the size of an atom in terms of its atomic radius, which is one-half
the distance between the two nuclei in two adjacent metal atoms. For
elements that exist as simple diatomic molecules, the atomic radius is
one-half the distance between the nuclei of the two atoms in a particular
molecule.
Ionic Radius
Ionic radius is the radius of a cation or an anion. Ionic radius affects the
physical and chemical properties of an ionic compound. For example,
the three-dimensional structure of an ionic compound depends on the
relative sizes of its cations and anions.
When a neutral atom is converted to an ion, we expect a change in size.
If the atom forms an anion, its size (or radius) increases, because the
nuclear charge remains the same but the repulsion resulting from the
additional electron(s) enlarges the domain of the electron cloud.
Comparison of atomic radii with ionic radii
Ionization Energy
Ionization energy is the minimum energy (in kJ/mol) required to remove

an electron from a gaseous atom in its ground state. In other words,
ionization energy is the amount of energy in kilojoules needed to strip 1
mole of electrons from 1 mole of gaseous atoms. Gaseous atoms are
specified in this definition because an atom in the gas phase is virtually
uninfluenced by its neighbors and so there are no intermolecular forces
(that is, forces between molecules) to take into account when
measuring ionization energy.
The magnitude of ionization energy is a measure of how “tightly” the
electron is held in the atom. The higher the ionization energy, the more
difficult it is to remove the electron. For a many-electron atom, the
amount of energy required to remove the first electron from the atom in
its ground state, is called the first ionization energy (I1).
In Equation, X represents an atom of any element and e- is an electron.

The second ionization energy (I2) and the third ionization energy (I3) are
shown in the following equations:
Electron Affinity
Another property that greatly influences the chemical behavior of atoms

is their ability to accept one or more electrons. This property is called
electron affinity, which is the negative of the energy change that occurs
when an electron is accepted by an atom in the gaseous state to form
an anion.
General Trends in Chemical Properties
The metallic character of the elements decreases from left to right

across a period and increases from top to bottom within a group. On the
basis of these trends and the knowledge that metals usually have low
ionization energies while nonmetals usually have high electron affinities,
we can frequently predict the outcome of a reaction involving some of
these elements.

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General Chemistry

The Periodic Table

Because many ionic compounds are made up of monatomic anions

A number of physical properties, including density, melting point, and

Ionization energy is the minimum energy (in kJ/mol) required to remove

In Equation, X represents an atom of any element and e- is an electron.

Another property that greatly influences the chemical behavior of atoms

The metallic character of the elements decreases from left to right

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