Nitrogen (N) and Phosphorus (P) are also important nutrients. Or Oxygen (O), which is needed to burn fire and to allow humans and animals to breathe. For example Carbon (C), which is a building block in almost all living organisms, and is required for biological processes to work. These are in fact the more important elements as regards for all life on earth, and are rather common on earth. NonmetalsĪ few elements in the Periodic Table are non-metals. An element found on the left in the system can therefore be expected to react as a metal, e.g. The elements that are metals are located to the left and in the middle of the Periodic Table. The division in periods and groups also gives information about the characteristics of an element, eg whether it is a metal or a non-metal and also how the element reacts with other element. How the elements are placed in the Periodic Table does not only give information about the atoms of the heavy elements of each element in relation to each other. The placement of the elements in the Periodic Table The elements have usually been named after their respective properties, by their discoverer or sometimes even bnased on the location where they were discovered. The designation of the chemical signs the elements consists of one or two letters, which is an abbreviation of the Latin name of the element. When Mendelev first published the system with periods (horizontal lines) and groups (vertical columns), it became Mendelev who received the honor, and he is usually considered to be the author of the Periodic Table as it is known today. A system was also set up by the German scientist Lothar Meyer and the Russian scientist Dimitri Mendelev at about the same time. First, a British chemist, John Alexander Reina Newlands, who set up a table of 62 out of 63 then known elements. In the 1860s, several scientists succeeded in making sorted and ordered tables of elements. Alongside this knowledge of the various elemental atomic numbers also emerged. HistoryĬhemists began to realize in the early 19th century that some elements could have similar properties. An element is a substance that consists of only one single kind of atom, and the atomic number of an element indicates how many protons there are in the core of the element. The Periodic Table is also called the Periodic Table of Elements, this is because it is a map, or a system, for organizing the elements by their properties and atomic numbers.