Talk:Periodic table of elements

Discussion Area

Rob, I've removed the approval template that you added to the article. Please see Approval Process. A single individual, who has worked on an article (as you have this one), should avoid nominating an article for approval unless there are two other Chemistry editors who are on hand and who have declared their willingness to approve the article as well. Even if there are other editors at work on the article, even if in allied fields such as biology, you still need two more chemistry editors. Sorry, but that's the rule that we decided on back in December. --Larry Sanger 12:21, 23 March 2007 (CDT)

The stamp (toapprove) has been here for over 4 weeks, NO chemistry editor in that period even was online, or have been for even some longer period. We can however remain sitting like a lame duck and do nothing. Waiting for editors to come aboard and be active. This is what I will do from now on. Thank you for pointing me to that. Robert Tito |  Talk  14:33, 23 March 2007 (CDT)

Unfortunately, that's what we have to do! But it is a problem that can be corrected. I think it will be corrected, in fact, either after we grow some more, or when we start up our new workgroup announcement lists--so, you'll be able to reach all the chemistry editors who agree to receive occasional messages. --Larry Sanger 14:56, 23 March 2007 (CDT)

visibility...pt1

Also, it would be great if the image of the Periodic Table were large enough to read. You need to make two clicks [1] in order to read this one. The Wikipedia article does a good job on this score. See [2] --Larry Sanger 12:24, 23 March 2007 (CDT)

The information in that table is just a fraction of the information in the used table. Any other example on WP also uses the two clicks. I could have placed a very simple table here, I wanted it to have relevant data. And in ONE jpg no links to other pages as these distract from the info. Robert Tito |  Talk  14:33, 23 March 2007 (CDT)

Well, it's just my opinion and I won't insist on it strongly, but it is frustrating for me to see that there is a lot more information on that particular table, and yet not be able to see it without clicking through. A simpler table, that one can use to click through to the individual elements, would be better, IMO. However, this is your decision, Chemistry Editor. We can always, of course, link to the bigger and better table. --Larry Sanger 14:56, 23 March 2007 (CDT)

My point is, Larry. The table can be used in both directions - omitting the information in the overview (that is the table) wouldn't make it easy to understand the coherence of the table. In that case the info would be in the individual eement pages, that was and is something I wanted to avoid. You look for instance to electronegatively while traversing horizontally, or shell configurations while traversing vertically. When you only have the name of the element such details will be overlooked and will not be evident. The coherence from the information of each individual element does not point to these obvious (for a chemist) uses. Accepting the double click is IMHO the better didactical option. Robert Tito |  Talk  15:05, 23 March 2007 (CDT)

Rob, I have real problems with reading this table at all, even in the largest version. There are two reasons for this: the resolution of the scan is too low; and the contrast is insufficient. Is it possible to get a better quality picture? Bear in mind that picture files of text need to be much larger and higher reolution than of simple graphics, especially when there is so much small text in it.

visibility

Martin, I have been poking around for better images but this was the best and informative I could find in the PD area. Many others are copyrighted - even though the info is PD. Robert Tito |  Talk 

Can anyone scan it again? If not, I will try meddling with it to improve the contrast and resolution. I do this a fair bit and have some tools, but it is always better to scan again if possible. --Martin Baldwin-Edwards 19:15, 18 October 2007 (CDT)

It is directly from the internet - not scanned (these I do at 600 dpi ==> 6+ MB/page) Robert Tito |  Talk 

suggest remove notorious polonium

I would remove the notorious mention, because a) there is no reference, and b) in a year or two everyone won't remember what it was about, and c) there have been many notorious problems with radioactive elements.

Also, I suspect we can find a very nice periodic table online from one of the national labs. I'll check. BTW: a little history is probably manditory, since elements were proposed to exist, and their properties were suggested, before their discovery, based on the periodic table. At the very least, a statement similar to what I just typed should be included.

David E. Volk 17:20, 19 October 2007 (CDT)

You are probably right about the polonium thing, especially if we approve and protect this article, because it will soon look dated.

David, I presume from the Note at the foot of the article, that you will not meet any resistance to adding some history. I suggest you do so, if you feel like it:-) --Martin Baldwin-Edwards 18:08, 19 October 2007 (CDT)

The Po-case in europe is still very much alive so outdated - yes maybe in 5 years now not for a long time. Besides the suspicion is countries used Po for these purposes in more instances. It can be moved to the history but it is a nice hint to what some elements can do and how they became famous/notorious. The history "hint" I put in because maybe somebody would be interested in it - either writing it or the history. For me it is more important the PToE exists.Robert Tito |  Talk  19:43, 19 October 2007 (CDT)

"The" plutonium poisoning scandal

In the very least there should be a Wikilink plus article to "the" scandal. Even today I wonder how many people will understand this reference to "the plutonium scandal". In a few years this reference will be completely puzzling.--Paul Wormer 02:19, 20 October 2007 (CDT)

Rewording opening sentence

The article opens with:

An element is a fundamental classification of atomic matter where differentiation of particles is based on the number of protons found in their nuclei.

which is correct of course, but "particles" sounds to me quite bad or unusual (but consider I'm Italian, i.e., quite far from Oxford... :)). I suggest this rephrasing:

An element is a fundamental classification of atomic matter based on the number of protons found in the nuclei of their atoms.

I'm not doing the substitution myself, but if someone from the chemistry group agrees, help yourself.

--Nereo Preto 03:12, 20 October 2007 (CDT)

Reformatted

I have taken the liberty of reformatting this article in the style of most other CZ articles. In so doing, I did not alter any of the content to any significant degree. I hope it okay by all. Milton Beychok 23:44, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

Ununbium

has now "verified" status and is about to get a real name: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8093374.stm. --Daniel Mietchen 08:20, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

Proposed name: copernicium, subject to approval by IUPAC. --Daniel Mietchen 14:52, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

where is the one periodic table that the user worked so hard on

i thought 1 user spent a ton of time working on a periodic table that expanded to different sizes, was interactive... etc. in CZ. Where is it? Tom Kelly 23:04, 25 July 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps best to ask User:David Yamakuchi - I think it was him. --Daniel Mietchen 23:55, 25 July 2009 (UTC)

Yup. It was me. http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Template:PTofE --David Yamakuchi 13:40, 16 April 2010 (UTC)

New representations of the table

I recently came across two preprints on this subject: An Alternate Graphical Representation of Periodic table of Chemical Elements which contains a historical overview that may be helpful here and whose Fig. 4 I have added to the gallery. It also cites another representation, based on group theory, which makes predictions about so far undiscovered elements (Fig. 7 in On a group-theoretical approach to the periodic table of chemical elements). --Daniel Mietchen 19:07, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

Color of V and Tc

Why are the boxes colored differently of the transition elements vanadium (V) and technetium (Tc)? --Paul Wormer 07:18, 28 April 2010 (UTC)

Technetium was colored differently because it is classified as a synthetic element. I'll look into what happened to the Vanadium...--David Yamakuchi 17:51, 28 April 2010 (UTC)

It appears that the issue with the Vanadium was that it was classified as a transition element rather than a transition metal. I've changed the classification, I saw you have created a redirect from transition metal to Transition element...so that should do it.--David Yamakuchi 19:19, 28 April 2010 (UTC)

Official names

Not sure where to raise this, so feel free to move or copy elsewhere.

The BBC recently reported that 3 new elements had been officially recognized: darmstadtium, roentgenium and copernicium. As I knew these had already been offically recognized by the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry, I was puzzled by this and looked it up on Wikipedia. According to them, what's happened is that they've now been officially recogniized by the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics too. This would imply that they have their own official list of elements, which may not be the same as IUPAC's. For example, they might disagree with IUPAC's spellings aluminium, caesium, sulfur. I can't find anything on their website. Peter Jackson 11:15, 7 November 2011 (UTC)