Every year, National Periodic Table Day is celebrated on February 7 since 2016 as a way to pay tribute to the chart. The periodic table is a tabular composition of chemical elements in accordance with their chemical properties and atomic number. The day is recognized to explore more about the periodic table and the chemist who discovered the chemical elements and its chemical reactions.
This year's Periodic Table Day will be celebrating 151 years of Periodic Law.
History of National Periodic Table Day:
On February 7, 2016, the first National Periodic Table Day was founded on February 7, 2016. The day serves to promote the challenges overcome to develop the modern periodic table. Mr. David T. Steineker, author, inventor, and chemistry teacher at Jefferson County Public Schools in Kentucky is inspired by those challenges.
He took the initiative to celebrate National Periodic Table Day based upon John Newlands’ first table of the elements published on February 7, 1863.
The Russian chemist and scientist Dmitri Mendeleev who is credited with the modern day period table was also born around this time.
Significance of National Periodic Table:
It is not right to not recognise the groundwork that was laid by German chemist Johann Dobereiner back in 1817 for the periodic table. Then along with J.J. Berzelius formed the basis for modifications by other scientists. Then John Newlands published the first version of the periodic table in 1863.John Newlands table was slightly flawed but he was the first to introduce the law of Octaves. Thus National Periodic Table Day honours both the periodic table and the scientists behind it.
Some facts about National Periodic Day:
The first acknowledged Periodic table was invented by Dmitri Ivanovich Mendeleev,a Russian chemist during the year 1869.
Prior to that, a table with 56 elements was published by John Newlands, an English Chemist during the year 1863 and to recognize this table, this day is credited.
The elements with the same chemical behavior are arranged in the center whereas the metals and nonmetals are arranged to the left and right respectively.
Before the invention of periodic tables,only a few elements were identified and used by ancient people.
Elements like Gold, silver,carbon, copper,tin, iron, lead, mercury and sulfur are the first ancient used elements.
As of 2015, Out of the 118,94 elements were discovered naturally from the earth.Rest of the 24 elements discovered by laboratory experiments.
All the 118 elements as of 2015 are officially proclaimed by the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC).
How is National Periodic Table celebrated:
Play the periodic table trivia: read a little about the periodic table and the elements that are there in the periodic table and play a game of trivia with friends and family.
Play the periodic table scrabble game: use the letters in the periodic table to make proper english words to play scrabble with.
