Periodic Table

  Periodic Table Introduction At some point in your chemistry education, you may have been introduced to the song “The Elements,” in which Tom Lehrer does a rapid-fire musical rendition of all the elements' names. Like me, you may even have been offered the opportunity to memorize this song for extra credit. If so, it’s possible that you still remember the names of all the elements, which is an impressive feat—not to mention a fun trick to pull out at parties. If you’ve memorized the names of the elements, does that mean you’ll never need a periodic table again? Well ... probably not. That’s because the periodic table isn’t just a big bucket that holds all of the elements. Instead, it’s more like a filing system. The position of each element in the table gives important information about its structure, properties, and behavior in chemical reactions. Specifically, an element’s position in the periodic table helps you figure out its electron configuration, how the electrons are organ...