| Somewhat later, about 1864, a chemist by the name of Newlands came up with
what he called the law of octaves. This idea was a bit more developed than Döbereiner's
triads. Newlands arranged the known elements by atomic weights. In doing so, he noticed
some recurring patterns, and the patterns were such 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 were similar to one another. So was the second element in
each group and the third and so on. There was a certain pattern in the properties of
elements that became even more apparent as time went on. In the 1860s quite a bit of new
information developed. In no small part this was due to the ideas of Avogadro begin
championed by Stanislao Cannizarro at the First International Chemical Congress in
Karlsruhe, Germany in 1860. |
| Newlands' Octaves |
| H |
Li |
Ga |
B |
C |
N |
O |
| F |
Na |
Mg |
Al |
Si |
P |
S |
| Cl |
K |
Ca |
Cr |
Ti |
Mn |
Fe |
| Co,Ni |
Cu |
Zn |
Y |
In |
As |
Se |
| Br |
Rb |
Sr |
Ce,La |
Zr |
Di,Mo |
Ro,Ru |
| Pd |
Ag |
Cd |
U |
Sn |
Sb |
Te |
| I |
Cs |
Ba,V |
Ta |
W |
Nb |
Au |
| Pt,Ir |
Tl |
Pb |
Th |
Hg |
Bi |
Cs |
| Adapted from Isaac Asimov's "A Short History of
Chemistry," Doubleday & Company, Garden City, NY, 1965. |
|
