What Is The Periodic Table: Is The Periodic Table Correct?

Let me be clear, the discovers and curators of the elements are geniuses and they deserve recognition for their amazing improvements in their field. But, as science advances there may be something new discovered. Science is constantly advancing, that’s the only thing constant about science. First, as always, we’ll need to do some personal discovery to learn about past and future discoveries, that is to say, we’ll need to understand what the periodic table is. Also known as the table of elements among other names it is the way we organize what makes everything. First, we’ll need to know what everything is. Atoms are structures of protons neutrons and electrons in varying quantities. Depending on the quantity you get different elements. For example, hydrogen has one electron and one proton. We now organize these elements by the number of their electrons and protons respectively. This is usually known as their atomic weight. You may know the story of the man who decided upon this system, the father of the periodic table, Dmitri Mendeleev. This poor boy, youngest of seventeen of which fourteen survived into adulthood Dmitri’s family couldn’t afford to pay for him to go to college, also it might’ve been helpful if both his parents were alive to afford something. At the age of thirteen his father, recently blind passed away. This forced his mother to work in a factory, soon destroyed in a fire. His mother fought to get Dmitri a higher education, yet he was rejected. He married, became a professor, won academic awards, literally obsessed over a woman and much more. In 1863 he came up with the idea we now use for a periodic table. His findings weren’t recognized until 1887. Others had similar ideas, but he was the only one that predicted new elements. He predicted elements like geranium based on the periodicity of elements. The periodic table has been through quite a few phases. There started out with four elements. Then we had fixed air, now known as oxygen. With trial and error, we had 33 elements. In another part of the world soon we had 28. When Dmitri Mendeleev began to sort them, he had 56 to work with. Finally, someone decided on 66 elements sorted by weight. Somehow we now have 118 elements. That seems so historic, discovering elements. Using paper and pencil for sketch after sketch of sorting techniques. The most recent discovery was extremely recent. It’s debatable when the most recent element was discovered. Some claim element 118 was discovered as recently as 2016. According to NPR element number 118 was at least named in 2016. It is difficult to pin down an exact day of a discovery, even an exact year. As we tend to focus on the same thing in different parts of the world discoveries are made multiple times. It’s also hard to be positive on something the first time you gain the notice of it. We need replication studies to be able to accept findings like this. My point is, these discoveries are happening, they have happened, but are still happening. We tend to think of most everything we learn as set in stone. This is mainly because of confirmation bias. For example, if it’s been a few years since you were in junior high science you might not have even known there are 118 elements. So, maybe in ten years, I’ll find out that there are 123. So, if we intend to discover more elements we’ll probably need to know how the originators did it. Turns out, it was Hennig Brand was the first, who discovered phosphorus. He was extremely secretive about his process but he obtained it through urine. Gosh darn it, guess I don’t get to examine urine. A lot of elements were discovered by accident. As you can’t predict an accident we’ll have to move on. Another way is to predict the groups like William Ramsay. William Ramsay predicted groups seven and one which are now known as noble gases. He used this information to inform his discovery process. Utilizing this information he discovered a lot of the noble gases today. But alas even he was extremely cautious in hiding the ways in which he discovered elements. Here’s where we can come in. If a 118th element was discovered why can’t a 119th discovery be on its way? So, how do we predict elements? Here’s my hypothesis: we look at the groups and that’s about it. All we have to do is observe the groups and their common traits like Dmitri Mendeleev. Because of the numeral aspect of the elements if we find one that doesn’t have an atomic weight (the number of electrons or protons) of 119 we’ll be making a lot more discoveries. For example, we discovered element #116 livermorium and element #114 flerovium when we only had 112 elements, leading us to discover two elements much easier. It still did take five years. Searching for those two elements helped us to discover elements #117 and #118 as well. That’s the true beauty of science. It’s change. It wouldn’t be near as fun if our discoveries never changed. Imagine if we couldn’t do repeat studies or even a study on the same subject. We could make new discoveries but we couldn’t improve old ones. We couldn’t have cars, just carts. We’d have to ride in the Wright brothers plane, I hope you weren’t planning on going out of the city. Or out of the field you took off in. Who knows, maybe we’ll discover that the table of elements was completely wrong. Maybe this article will be laughable someday. All we can do right now is look towards the future with hope, behind us with fondness, and keep searching to advance everything we know to be set in stone.