Periodic Table
Questions: Thomas found the periodic table both fascinating and informative. He used it his whole career to inform him about how to make chemical inventions. What was so amazing about the periodic table? What is in the table and what does it tell us?
Explorations: If students have not been introduced to the periodic table, this may be a spot to pull out the chart and have students pore over the information. There are may initial lessons that can be made by looking at the chart--noting the symbols for common elements, noting the progressive numbering system, the increase in weight of the elements, and the curious arrangement of the chart into families. Deductively, students can understand the nature of a “family” if a description of each element is provided and where students could determine the common attribute. A list of elements and their characteristics can be provided alphabetically. Students would then find the element in the family, He, Ne, Ar, Kr, Rn, Xe, for example and then deduce that everything in family or group 0 is a non reactive or inert gas. Similar discoveries can be made for other families.
Using the web, pictures of most elements can be assembled for some families of elements. Such as the earth alkali metals:
Beryllium
Magnesium
Calcium
Strontium
Barium
Radium
