For anyone interested in translating the table into a language other than English, Bruce Railsback has prepared a version of the Earth Scientist's Periodic Table of the Elements and Their Ions from which all English has been removed. Railsback would provide the blank template on the condition that the translator would send back a finished translation that could be made available on this website so that it would be available globally. The translation would also be required to contain a statement that the table had been published in English in the Geological Society of America's journal Geology and in its Map and Chart series, and that the English-language version is available from GSA.Contact Railsback for details and to get the template.
Philosophical (and other) thoughts
There's a page of questions and answers about the Earth Scientist's Periodic Table of the Elements and Their Ions.
There's also a page on early analogs of the Earth Scientist's Periodic Table of the Elements and Their Ions.
Acknowledgements
Among the many people whose comments and suggestions improved the new table in its early stages are the faculty of the Department of Geology of the University of Georgia, especially Drs. Michael F. Roden and Paul A. Schroeder, and Mr. Drew Mirante of the same department and Dr. Celeste M. Condit of the same university.
GSA's reviewers provided many insightful and useful comments that improved the table and its accompanying manuscript. Geology Editor Ben A. van der Pluijm, Managing Editor Anika Burkard, and Copy Editor Mary C. Eberle of Wordrite all facilitated and enhanced the transition of the table to its published form. The National Science Foundation's Directorate for Undergraduate Education provided Grant DUE 02-03115 to support publication of the table as a large-format document in Geology. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.
GSA's publication division greatly enhanced dissemination of the table by promoting it in media releases to news outlets outside GSA. Alexandra Goho of Science News, Elizabeth Nadin of Earthscope, Amy Perry of Today's Science on File, Dr. Stephan Reebs of the Departement of Biology of the University of Moncton and writer for Natural History, Eric Levin of Discover, and many others wrote useful and occasionally flattering reports about the table.
Subsequent to publication of the table in Geology, Dr. Eric Essene of the University of Michigan, Dr. Joel Leventhal of the U.S. Geological Survey, Dr. Lawrence Grossman of the University of Chicago, and Dr. Johan Ingri of the Luleå University of Technology in Sweden provided insightful comments that improved the table in the transition from Version 4.6 to 4.7. Dr. Mark R. Leach of the Division of Chemistry of theUniversity of Salford (UK) has also added insights about the hard-soft or A vs. B division of cations, and you're encouraged to visit his recent analysis of the HSAB principle and his his chemical thesaurus.
Reproduction of the table in GSA Maps and Chart Series was facilitated and overseen by GSA's editor of the Map and Cart Series, Dr. J. Douglas Walker of the University of Kansas, and the manuscript was improved by his comments and those of an anonymous reviewer. Revision regarding bacterial nutrients was aided by the helpful comments of Drs. Anne O. Summers and Samantha Joy of the University of Georgia.
All of the above are thanked for their help. The length of this list illustrates the extent to which no work in the sciences, even a single-authored document, is the work of just one person.Presentations
Railsback has a roughly hour-long presentation to introduce the periodic table to academic audiences. It includes several diagrams in addition to the table itself. If you're interested in having him come to your institution to bore your students and/or colleagues with that talk, email him at rlsbk@gly.uga.edu. He'll bring a wall-size paper copy for the talk and leave that copy for your institution's further use. He also has a related talk titled "A Systematic Explanation of Systematic Mineralogy" that he can give; you can see the abstract and key figures.
Persons who find the visual presentation of geochemical concepts useful may also be interested in Railsback's Some Fundamentals of Mineralogy and Geochemistry.
If you bookmark this periodic table, you should bookmark this page rather than a jpeg or pdf file. That is because files for subsequent versions of the table will have different URLs than that of the present version. The URL of this page should not change.
email to Bruce Railsback (rlsbk@gly.uga.edu)
Back to Railsback's main web page.
FAQs
A new Earth Scientist's Periodic Table of the Elements and Their Ions presents the naturally occurring charged species commonly encountered by geoscientists, as well as elemental forms, and it is organized by charge. The new table therefore shows many elements multiple times, unlike the conventional table.
Are there 92 or 118 elements? ›
As of April 2024, 118 chemical elements have been identified and named officially by IUPAC.
Why are there only 92 naturally occurring elements? ›
Scientists used to believe that, except for the element technetium, all the elements up to element 92 (uranium) could be found in nature. However, it turns out there are other elements that occur in trace amounts naturally. This brings the number of naturally occurring elements to 98.
How many elements were created in the last 70 years? ›
Before the nuclear age, uranium was thought to be the end of the periodic table, but in the last 70 years, scientists have left nature behind and created 26 new elements.
What are 7 elements named after scientists? ›
People
- Bohrium (Niels Bohr)
- Curium (Marie and Pierre Curie)
- Einsteinium (Albert Einstein)
- Fermium (Enrico Fermi)
- Lawrencium (Ernest Lawrence)
- Roentgenium (Wilhelm Röntgen)
- Rutherfordium (Ernest Rutherford)
- Seaborgium (Glenn T. Seaborg)
Feedback? According to the five elements theory, everything in nature is made up of five elements: Earth, Water, Fire, Air, and Space.
Does element 93 exist? ›
Between those planets sits Neptune, and the gap between the two elements leaves a space for their relatively unsung cousin, neptunium - element number 93 in the periodic table.
Does the 119th element exist? ›
Ununennium, also known as eka-francium or element 119, is a hypothetical chemical element; it has symbol Uue and atomic number 119. Ununennium and Uue are the temporary systematic IUPAC name and symbol respectively, which are used until the element has been discovered, confirmed, and a permanent name is decided upon.
Is a diamond an element? ›
In short, the answer is no. The statement 'diamond is an element' is misleading as carbon itself is an element. While a diamond is composed of 100% of carbon with no other elements involved, it is not an element but simply an allotrope of the element carbon.
What is the most heavy element? ›
Then along came element 118. Oganesson, named for Russian physicist Yuri Oganessian (SN: 1/21/17, p. 16), is the heaviest element currently on the periodic table, weighing in with a huge atomic mass of about 300.
Why is tantalum the least abundant stable element in the universe? Tantalum, like most metals, is produced via stellar nucleosynthesis. Tantalum is typically produced in stars through either the s-process or the r-process; a nucleus of an atom such as iron gains mass through neutron capture.
What is the heaviest element in the universe? ›
The heaviest element ever synthesized is oganesson (chemical symbol Og). It has 118 protons and 176 neutrons, making an atomic mass of 294.
What is the newest element? ›
- The modern periodic table may contain several elements and they are arranged according to their atomic number, electronic configuration, and physical and chemical properties.
- There are a total of 7 periods and 18 groups.
- Nihonium, Moscovium, Tennessine, and Oganesson, are the newest found element in the periodic table.
The most expensive natural element is francium, but it decays so quickly it can't be collected to be sold. If you could buy it, you'd pay billions of dollars for 100 grams. The most expensive natural element that is stable enough to purchase is lutetium. If you order 100 grams of lutetium, it will cost about $10,000.
What is the oldest element? ›
For chemistry students and teachers: The tabular chart on the right is arranged by the discovery year. The oldest chemical element is Phosphorus and the newest element is Hassium. Please note that the elements do not show their natural relation towards each other as in the Periodic system.
Who are the scientist involved in periodic table? ›
The history of the periodic table reflects over two centuries of growth in the understanding of the chemical and physical properties of the elements, with major contributions made by Antoine-Laurent de Lavoisier, Johann Wolfgang Döbereiner, John Newlands, Julius Lothar Meyer, Dmitri Mendeleev, Glenn T.
What scientist made the periodic table? ›
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. While arranging the elements according to their atomic weight, if he found that they did not fit into the group he would rearrange them.
What are 4 elements named after scientists? ›
Some of the best-known elements include einsteinium (Albert Einstein), curium (Marie and Pierre Curie), rutherfordium (Ernest Rutherford), nobelium (Alfred Nobel), and mendelevium (Dmitri Mendeleev).
Which scientist classified elements? ›
In 1913 A.D. the English scientist Henry Moseley demonstrated, with the help of the experiments done using an X-ray tube, that the atomic number (Z) of an element corresponds to the positive charge on the nucleus or the number of protons in the nucleus of the atom of that element.
