The periodic table currently has 118 chemical elements (SN: 11/30/16). The five heaviest elements were all produced using a beam of calcium-48. That’s a variety, or isotope, of calcium with 28 ...

The periodic table can be read across from left to the right along the rows horizontally. It can also be read up and down the vertical columns. Rows of elements are called periods. They go across ...

Columns in the periodic table are called groups or families. Elements within the same group share similar properties because they have the same number of valence electrons (electrons in the ...

History of Periodic Table of Elements Johann Dobereiner, a German chemist, was the first to consider trends among element properties in the early 1800s. In 1829, Dobereiner identified similarities ...

So the beauty of the periodic table is that the elements that are in columns, up and down, have similar properties. But there are similarities within a group going across too.