Physicists have filled in some longtime blank spaces on the periodic table, calculating electron affinities of the lanthanides, a series of 15 elements known as rare earths. Physicists at Michigan ...

Chemistry’s eye-catching arrangement of elements has undergone many changes since its inception in the mid 1800s. To this day, scientists seek to improve it. Anyone who attended a high school science ...

In the wee hours of the late 17th century, Isaac Newton could be found locked up in his laboratory prodding the secrets of nature. Giant plumes of green smoke poured from cauldrons of all shapes and ...

Electrons in atoms occupy energy levels, also called electron shells, outside the nucleus. Different shells can hold different maximum numbers of electrons. The electrons in an atom occupy the lowest ...

Whether hung on classroom walls, put up in dorm rooms or screen-printed on T-shirts, the periodic table of elements screams, “Science!” like no other image. And why not? At 118 members and counting, ...

Recognize these rows and columns? You may remember a detail or two about this mighty table’s organization from a long-ago chemistry class. Elements are ordered according to their number of protons, or ...

For now, they're known by working names, like ununseptium and ununtrium — two of the four new chemical elements whose discovery has been officially verified. The elements with atomic numbers 113, 115, ...

Physicists develop a 'nuclear periodic table'. While the traditional table is based on the behavior of electrons in an atom, this new table is based on the protons in the nucleus. Protons have ...