In 1869, Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleev created the framework that became the modern periodic table, leaving gaps for elements that were yet to be discovered. He arranged the elements in eight groups but left no gaps for undiscovered elements. He found that every eight elements had similar properties and called this the law of octaves. For example, carbon, being12 times heavier than hydrogen, would have an atomic weight of 12.īritish chemist John Newlands was the first to arrange the elements into a periodic table with increasing order of atomic masses.

They concluded that hydrogen would be assigned the atomic weight of 1 and the atomic weight of other elements would be decided by comparison with hydrogen. He arranged them in groups of three in increasing order of atomic weight and called them triads, observing that some properties of the middle element, such as atomic weight and density, approximated the average value of these properties in the other two in each triad.Ī breakthrough came with the publication of a revised list of elements and their atomic masses at the first international conference of chemistry in Karlsruhe, Germany, in 1860. Forty years later, German physicist Johann Wolfang Döbereiner observed similarities in physical and chemical properties of certain elements. In 1789, French chemist Antoine Lavoisier tried grouping the elements as metals and nonmetals. Among the scientists who worked to created a table of the elements were, from left, Antoine Lavoisier, Johann Wolfang Döbereiner, John Newlands and Henry Moseley.

Periodic table test