periodic table of the elements

Cultural  

1. A chart of the chemical elements that displays them in rows horizontally in order of increasing atomic number and vertically according to similarity of the chemical properties of their atoms. The position of an element on the table thus gives useful information about the structure and chemical properties of the element. (See Dimitri Mendeleev.)

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Example Sentences

Hydrogen and helium are the first and lightest entries on the periodic table of the elements.

From Science Daily • Feb. 15, 2024

Visual artist Langley Spurlock and poet John Martin Tarrat spent several years interpreting the periodic table of the elements, and they’re not quite ready to let that subject go.

From Washington Post • Oct. 13, 2021

Indeed, it was in the 1970s that Whittingham began investigating the use of lithium, the smallest and lightest metal in the periodic table of the elements.

From Scientific American • Oct. 9, 2019

At the university, Pavlov’s freshman class in inorganic chemistry was taught by Dmitri Mendeleev, who, a year earlier, had created the periodic table of the elements as a teaching tool.

From The New Yorker • Nov. 17, 2014

In the periodic table of the elements, elements in a single column have the same number of electrons that can participate in a chemical reaction.

From Textbooks • Jun. 19, 2013