Mendeleev and the Periodic Table

Have you ever had a special collection? You may have collected items like baseball cards, miniature cars, trains, or maybe even stuffed animals. Have you ever tried to sort them into categories? If you sorted cars, perhaps you sorted by body style, color, or make/model.

Just as you may have sorted an old collection, past scientists wanted to devise a way to sort the recently-discovered elements. As more and more elements were being discovered, trying to come up with a way to organize them became a very popular topic among scientists. Many scientists were involved in this little contest, but one scientist revolutionized our understanding of atoms and created a table of the elements that is seen hanging in virtually every chemistry classroom and every lab in the world. In this topic, you will learn about the periodic table that was created by Dmitri Mendeleev.

Essential Question

• How was the periodic table developed, and how does it look today?