The Periodic Table

Today we started by looking at some data about 20 elements, and trying to organise them by common properties and trends. These common properties help us understand the structure of the Periodic Table of Elements, and to use it to make predictions. We had nine unknown elements that we needed to predict the position of in our Periodic Table.

We then learned that the Periodic Table is organised into columns (Groups/Families) of elements with similar chemical properties. The rows (Periods) are elements all with the same number of electron shells ("energy levels"). For example, all elements in the second period have two electron shells, and their valence electrons are in the second electron shell.