least reactive elements on the periodic table

Make predictions about the periodicity properties of the representative elements.“The big question is ‘How efficiently is information conveyed and what is it representing?’” Vernon said.By the end of this section, you will be able to:

Scerri said there are people trying to create three-dimensional pop-up tables in textbooks. Vernon said three-dimensional versions of the periodic table have their own merits and demerits but can be difficult to convey in a textbook. “It’s a very interesting form to study but it’s at the expense of clarity.” “The left step table appeals to a lot of people based on its aesthetics, it’s highly regular, it’s highly ordered,” he said. He said his main concern with the left step table was that it does not show the progression from metals to nonmetals and other chemical trends across elements. René Vernon, an Australian-based periodic table researcher, said he values clarity in a periodic table more than aesthetic appeal. The easiest way to resolve this is to put a small symbol at the corner of the odd elements, indicating they are exceptions. He said there are rare situations in which an element’s electrons do not behave as expected according to their chemical traits, suggesting the element should be grouped with other elements that share the same electron configurations but not the same chemical traits, which do not always align. He said he initially resisted the idea of putting helium with alkali metals such as magnesium and calcium because of their varying reactivity, but said this difference might be insignificant because the purpose of the table is to understand electron configurations. While the spiral might look nice, it does not break the elements into periods so, if he had to choose, Stewart said he would pick the left step table. “In a world of curved forms, straight lines and right angles only appeared with the invention of building with blocks or bricks a few thousand years ago.” “Curves appeal to our eyes, which evolved for millions of years,” he said. Philip Stewart, a chemistry professor at the University of Oxford, said he likes the aesthetic appeal of organizing the elements in a spiral.

“This highlights the tension between physics and chemistry.” “From a purely chemistry point of view, this version seems to be a bit unnatural and forced,” Scerri said. For chemists, however, placing helium with highly reactive elements feels wrong. This organization makes sense for physicists who think of elements in terms of orbitals and electrons. The left step table, one of the many proposed alternatives to the traditional table, prefers to organize elements based on the number of outermost electrons regardless of reactivity and groups helium with highly reactive elements such as magnesium and calcium. The periodic table traditionally taught in textbooks, which organizes elements based on chemical traits such as reactivity, places helium in the rightmost column with the other less reactive elements. The placement of helium is at the center of the periodic table debate. Since then, the table has been published in at least a thousand different forms, organizing the elements in different shapes and using different criteria, such as atomic weight and number of orbitals. The periodic table was created 150 years ago by Dmitri Mendeleev, but is still a point of contention for many researchers in the field of chemistry. “The periodic table has been called the paradigm of chemistry it’s the framework, it simplifies and organizes chemistry,” he said.

Even his credit card has a picture of the traditional periodic table. His office is cluttered with posters and three-dimensional models of different periodic systems. Eric Scerri, a UCLA chemistry lecturer, has written at least six books discussing the orientation of the periodic table.

Least reactive elements on the periodic table