A Brief History of the Periodic Table

Virtually all science classrooms will have at least one common thing posted on their walls; a poster of the periodic table. The periodic table is simply a chart of all known elements, arranging them as defined by periodic law; it orders the elements by increasing atomic number, displaying the periodicity of chemical and physical properties in the elements. The first contributions to the periodic table were made in antiquity, with the discovery of obvious elements …

…mber is very similar to the order of atomic mass). Many modern variations of the basic periodic table exist: two such tables are Professor Thoedor Benfey's Periodic Spiral and Doctor Timmothy Stowe's Physicists' Periodic Table. These variations are simply alternative representations of essentially the same classification. Without the prerequisites posed through the work of Mendeleev and all the other scientists leading up to today, the Periodic Table as we know it would still not exist.