Now let's get into the organization of matter.
To really understand how matter and what we
as human beings know thus far what exists
in matter we have to talk about the periodic
table of elements. One has to realize that
every substance in the universe is made up
of chemicals such as hydrogen, helium, and
oxygen. Thus all the chemicals are made up
of elements. Whereas all the elements, again,
are made up of atoms. You know, the building
blocks of matter. So it can all be said that
every substance, again, in the universe is
made up not only of matter; but then the building
blocks of matter. Something that we can pull
out of matter that are atoms. Get it. So then
what is the periodic table of elements? The
periodic table of elements is the most important
chemistry reference there is. It rearranges
or arranges all the known elements in our
world as we know it in an informative way.
Elements are known pieces of matter and are
arranged from left to right, from top to bottom
by order of increasing atomic number. It's
nice to know that Russian scientist Demetri
Mendeli was the one that actually organized
this. This guy was the seventeenth kid in
a family that was from Siberia. He had a lot
to do since it was freezing up there. It's
nice to know that many people had something
to do with the periodic table. Obviously,
a prerequisite to the construction of the
table was the discovery of individual elements.
Now even though we know elements such as silver,
gold, tin, lead, mercury, and copper have
been known since antiquity. The first actually
discovery of an element seems to have occurred
in 1649 when Henick Bran discovered phosphorus.
Then during the next 200 years, elements continued
to be added. The periodic table, then, as
you can see from 1, 2,3, 4, 5...all the way
down is arranged by atomic number and then
by similar properties.
