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  Web Book Home Page | Chemogenesis Main Index Foreword:  Chemogenesis & Chemical Education Part I   Atoms | Elements | Periodic Tables 1.1  Introduction to Chemogenesis 1.2  Nucleosynthesis of The Elements 1.3  The Segrè Chart 1.4  Quantum Numbers to Periodic Tables 1.5  The Periodic Table: What Is It Showing? 1.6  The INTERNET Database of Periodic Tables 1.7  Periodicity Part II   Structure | Bonding | Material Type 2.1  Mono-Bond Typed Binary Compounds 2.2  Binary Compound Synthlet 2.3  Electronegativity 2.4  van Arkel-Ketelaar Triangles of Bonding 2.5  Tetrahedra of Structure, Bonding & Material Type 2.6  Structure, Bonding & Material Synthlet 2.7  The Classification of Matter: Chemical Stuff Part III   Interactions | Reactions | Mechanisms 3.1  The Chemogenesis Analysis: An Overview 3.2  Lewis and Brønsted Models of Acidity 3.3  The Hard Soft [Lewis] Acid Base Principle 3.4  Main Group Elemental Hydrides 3.5  Five Hydrogen Probe Experiments 3.6  Congeneric Dots, Series & Planars 3.7  Quantifying Congeneric Behaviour 3.8  Ligand Replacement Congeneric Series 3.9  Congeneric Array Interactions 3.10  Emergence of Organic Chemistry 3.11  Congeneric Array Database 3.12  The Five Reaction Chemistries 3.13  Lewis Acids & Lewis Bases: A New Analysis 3.14  The Lewis Acid/Base Interaction Matrix 3.15  Patterns in Reaction Chemistry Poster 3.16  Lewis Acid/Base Interaction Matrix Database 3.17  Nucleophiles, Bases & The Fluoride Ion 3.18  Redox Chemistry 3.19  Redox Chemistry Synthlet 3.20  Radical Chemistry 3.21  Diradical Chemistry 3.22  Photochemistry 3.23  Species/Species Interactions 3.24  The Simplest Mechanistic Step: STAD 3.25  Unit & Compound Mechanistic Steps 3.26  The Mechanism Matrix 3.27  Addition To A Double Bond Synthlet 3.28  Pericyclic Reaction Chemistry Part IV   Chemical Theory 4.1  Why Do Chemical Reactions Occur? 4.2a  Thermochemistry: List Reactions Synthlet 4.2b  Thermochemistry: Play With Reaction Synthlet 4.2c  Thermochemistry: Bulid A Reaction Synthlet 4.3  Timeline of Structural Theory 4.4  Modern Lewis Theory 4.5  Valence Shell Electron Pair Repulsion: VSEPR 4.6  Diatomic Species by Molecular Orbital Theory 4.7  Polyatomic Species: Molecular Orbitals 4.8  Organic π-Systems 4.9  Functional Group Database Part V   Complexity & Emergence 5.1  Chemistry & Complexity: Systems 5.2  Linear Chemistry Systems 5.3  Chemical Systems Prone to Complexity Part VI   Extras 6.1  Chemogenesis Videos 6.2  Chemical Thesaurus Reaction Chemistry Database 6.3  Paper: Chemogenesis 6.4  Paper: Electronegativity as a Basic Elemental Property (FoC) 6.5  Workshop: What is Chemistry? 6.6  Paper: Scientific laws, Dalton’s postulates, chemical reactions
          and Wolfram’s NKS (FoC) 6.7  Literature References & Further Reading

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The INTERNET Database of Periodic Tables

There are thousands of periodic tables in web space, but this is the only comprehensive database of periodic tables & periodic system formulations. If you know of an interesting periodic table that is missing, please contact the database curator: Mark R. Leach Ph.D. The database holds information on periodic tables, the discovery of the elements, the elucidation of atomic weights and the discovery of atomic structure (and much, much more).

Newlands' Octaves

One of the first attempts at a periodic table that arranged the known elements by atomic weight and chemical property, was by John Newlands and is known as "Newlands Octaves".

Newland noticed that if he broke up his list of elements into groups of seven – starting a new row with the eighth element – the first element in each of those groups had similar chemistry.

Note: In the tables below, Newlands Octaves go downwards: H to O, F to S, Cl to Fe, etc.

• Seeing the word octave applied to this table may lead one to think that Newlands recognised periods of eight elements with repeating properties, as we do with the modern periodic table, for example: Li Be B C N O F Ne.
• However, each sequence of Newlands' octaves contain only seven elements. Count the elements in the columns! In Newlands' day the group 8 (18) rare gas elements, He, Ne, Ar, Kr & Xe, had not yet been discovered.
• To Newlands, H to F & F to Cl are octaves of eight elements, the eighth element repeating the properties of the first.
  
  There are seven notes in a musical octave: A B C D E F G, after which you start again with A'; similarly for Newlands, seven elements H Li G Bo C N O, then the 8th is F and you start again. [Note that Newlands treated H as a halogen.] More here.

          A   B   C   D   E   F   G   A

Philip Stewart's musical representation:

• To Newlands, H to F is an octave of eight elements.
• Today we say Li to Ne & Na to Ar are periods of eight elements, and that that Li and Na are in different periods. Indeed, the Li to Na series consists of nine elements.
• In Newlands' day the group 8 (18) rare gas elements, He, Ne, Ar, Kr & Xe, had not been discovered.

Read more about Newland's Octaves, including a commentary on the original papers in Carmen Giunta's Elements and Atoms: Case Studies in the Development of Chemistry.

© Mark R. Leach Ph.D. 1999 –

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