Is the Periodic Table of Elements Wrong ?


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You know the periodic table that hung on the wall of every science class you took at school? As of today, it?s wrong. Or more precisely, it's inaccurate.

One of the biggest changes in decades is set to be made to the periodic table, with the atomic weight of 10 elements altered to better reflect how they occur in nature.

For more than a century, scientists have assigned a standard single value to the atomic weights

of elements. Now they say those numbers aren't as static as first believed.

The International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) has decided that the weights of 10 elements will now be expressed as ranges instead of a single value, with an upper and lower limit.

The elements are hydrogen, lithium, boron, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, silicon, sulphur, chlorine and thallium.

"We actually give a starting and ending mass for the element that we believe encompasses all normal sources that you'll find in the world, and we think this is the better way of doing it."

You might think such a change is purely scientific, but it actually has some big consequences for research and industry.

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I feel that the content of the post better expresses the actual reality to the situation rather than the post title. As the quoted statement asserted, "...more precisely, it's inaccurate". In fact, I'm not even sure if inaccurate is the correct word. A better phrase would be that the current periodic table is incomplete or lacking details. This is what I love about science though; science admits to mistakes and fixes them. If you never make a mistake (or admit to a mistake), then you never learn anything.

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This is nothing new. You should see some of the "science" books my grandmother used in grade school 100 years ago.

This is why new versions of science textbooks are constantly being published. As new data is discovered, these textbooks have to be revised to portray these facts.

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I guess that means it will be even harder for the middle-schoolers to memorize the periodic table.

maybe they should produce two versions of periodic tables, an "accurate" one and an abridged one. Seriously, I guess for 99% of the people out there, the only use of the periodic table is to memorize it and pass middle school chemistry exams, and then completely forget about it. Not everyone needs to learn differentiation and integration, and not everyone needs to learn the periodic table, especially with hard to remember ranges in it.

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I want my bad chemistry grades relativated and corrected! :angry:

Glassed Silver:mac

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So instead of taking a weighted average, they are just going to provide the range of atomic weights of the stable isotopes.

Honestly even at GCSE level you get pointed out that chlorine has an atomic weight of 35.5 and that that seems odd.

They even teach you how to calculate the 35.5 value from the actual atomic weights of 35 and 37.

Every chemist will know about this, so I don't exactly get what they think this will achieve,

perhaps instead of giving results as the average, they intend to encourage results in the form of an upper and lower bound?

Edit:

"No, of course not. For most calculations, people will just carry on as before," he said.

"A lot of things you do don't require that kind of precision, so we're not going to change the first year chemistry text book and probably half my colleagues won't notice that this has happened at all.

Right so those "big consequences" that fox news were talking about are actually contradicted by a statement from the source later on in the article...

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The periodic table is wrong!

*adds a hyphen to a few elements*

All fixed!

Seriously, I wish that the media would stop hyping stuff up, it's not wrong, it's not just not entirely accurate (since it doesn't cover all the possible weights of the element)

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I guess that means it will be even harder for the middle-schoolers to memorize the periodic table.

maybe they should produce two versions of periodic tables, an "accurate" one and an abridged one. Seriously, I guess for 99% of the people out there, the only use of the periodic table is to memorize it and pass middle school chemistry exams, and then completely forget about it. Not everyone needs to learn differentiation and integration, and not everyone needs to learn the periodic table, especially with hard to remember ranges in it.

I've taken 4 chemistry classes in college and not once did I have to memorize the periodic table. Also, I think your statistics are an exaggeration. I guarantee you there is more than 1% of people out there who regularly use the period table. There are many branches of chemistry and many branches of biology that use chemistry as well as the period table. Not everyone needs to memorize it but everyone should definitely know how to read, use, and understand it. It's a great reference tool.

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So instead of taking a weighted average, they are just going to provide the range of atomic weights of the stable isotopes.

Honestly even at GCSE level you get pointed out that chlorine has an atomic weight of 35.5 and that that seems odd.

They even teach you how to calculate the 35.5 value from the actual atomic weights of 35 and 37.

Same way I learned it. This change isn't radical.

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  • 3 weeks later...

The thread title could really be fixed. lol

The original announcement from the USGS can be found here.

The standard atomic weights for hydrogen, lithium, boron, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, silicon, sulfur, chlorine and thallium previously were expressed as central values with uncertainties that reflected natural atomic-weight variations. The weights of these elements now will be expressed as intervals to more accurately convey this variation in atomic weight. For example, boron is commonly known to have a standard atomic weight of 10.811. However, its actual atomic weight can be anywhere between 10.806 and 10.821, depending on where the element is found.

The atomic weight of an element depends upon how many stable isotopes it has and the relative amount of each stable isotope. Isotopes are atoms of the same element that have different masses. Variations in atomic weight occur when an element has two or more naturally occurring stable isotopes that vary in abundance.

Modern analytical techniques can measure the atomic weight of many elements precisely, and these small variations in an element?s atomic weight are important in research and industry. For example, precise measurements of the abundances of isotopes of carbon can be used to determine purity and source of food products, such as vanilla and honey. Isotopic measurements of nitrogen, chlorine and other elements are used for tracing pollutants in streams and groundwater. In sports doping investigations, performance enhancing testosterone can be identified in the human body because the atomic weight of carbon in natural human testosterone is higher than that in pharmaceutical testosterone.

Elements with only one stable isotope do not exhibit variations in their atomic weights. For example, the standard atomic weights for fluorine, aluminum, sodium and gold are constant, and their values are known to better than six decimal places.

The USGS has a long history of research in determining atomic weights of the chemical elements. As far back as 1882, Frank W. Clark, chief chemist of the USGS, prepared a table of atomic weights.

The year 2011 has been designated as the International Year of Chemistry. The IYC is an official United Nations International Year, proclaimed at the UN as a result of the initiative of IUPAC and UNESCO. IUPAC will feature the change in the standard atomic weights table as part of associated IYC activities.

This fundamental change in the presentation of the atomic weights is based upon work between 1985 and 2010 supported by IUPAC, the USGS, and other contributing Commission members and institutions. IUPAC oversees the evaluation and dissemination of atomic-weight values.

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