Some questions about this vintage periodic table

[jmatt]

TL;DR Summary

quantum number, orbitals, periodic chart

I was recently in an art supply store and saw a print of a vintage periodic table that I thought had real aesthetic value. I bought it and like any enthusiast I hung it in my bathroom. For the past month I have been studying it as I brush my teeth and feel comfortable with 80% of the information. I am posting this to the QM forum rather than Chemistry because my undergraduate degree is in physics, and I feel more at home here. Here is the print ...

Here is a closeup of Nitrogen ...

Here is a small key to the chart ...

Question 1

I do not understand the "X" with numbers that represent Valence electrons. I assume it has to do with the rules of adding electrons to orbitals but symbolism here escapes me.

Question 2

Looking at the way the information is presented and the content, about what year do you think this was created?

Any other comments on the presentation and information are welcome! I hope this is appropriate for this forum.

 

[PeterDonis]

Looking at the way the information is presented and the content, about what year do you think this was created?

The fact that the atomic weight of oxygen is given as exactly 16.0000 suggests that it was made before 1961, since that was the year in which the atomic mass unit was redefined to be 1/12 of the mass of the carbon-12 isotope instead of 1/16 of the mass of a naturally occurring mixture of oxygen isotopes.

 

[bigfooted]

Also, element 103 is missing, which is Lawrencium (discovered 1961).
Technetium (element 43 ) is present in the table, this element was named in 1947.

 

[bigfooted]

I asked chatgpt to give me a sorted list (by year of the current naming of the element) of the elements from the periodic table, and it gave for Nobelium the year 1957, which is already in the table. The wiki page tells me 1957 was the official year of discovery, so it might be that the name was not given in exactly this year (for example Technetium was already discovered in 1937).

 

[PeterDonis]

I asked chatgpt

ChatGPT is not a reliable source. Please do not post material from ChatGPT.

 

[PeterDonis]

The wiki page tells me 1957 was the official year of discovery

For Nobelium, I think it's more complicated than that. Here is the Wikipedia article:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobelium

A Swedish team at the Nobel Institute claimed discovery in 1957, but it's not clear how widely accepted their claims were since a team at Berkeley repeated their experiment in 1958 and were unable to detect what the Swedish team claimed to have detected. As the article notes, later work made it much more likely that the Swedish team was actually detecting thorium-225.

That said, the article does say that the name Nobelium for element 102 was accepted by IUPAC in 1957, so that in itself might have been enough to convince a maker of periodic tables to include it with that name, even if the full details of its discovery were still in dispute.

 

[phyzguy]

It looks just like the one that hung on the wall of my high school Chemistry class back in the late 60's/early 70's.

 

[jmatt]

Thanks everyone. Any thoughts on the "X" and valence electrons?

 

[dextercioby]

Those tiny figures in the X show the most probable (the most common) oxydation number states. For Nitrogen, they give -3 (for metallic compounds, or for NH_3), +2 for NO, and +5 for N_2 O_5.

 

[jmatt]

Ahh ... thanks! Lot of information in one little graphic.

 

[jmatt]

It looks just like the one that hung on the wall of my high school Chemistry class back in the late 60's/early 70's.

Mine too! I think it was popular in that era.