Elements on the Table
Pick a part of the table and fill it in. Each square shows only its atomic number, and you type the element's name or symbol. A right answer turns the square green, a wrong one red, and after each answer the next empty square is picked for you, though you can click any square you like.
Questions about the table
Do I have to spell the element exactly?
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Do I have to spell the element exactly?
›Not in names mode. Capital letters, spaces and accents are ignored, one wrong or swapped letter is forgiven in names of five to eight letters, and two in longer ones, so praseodymium survives a slip. Names of four letters or fewer have to be exact, because gold, iron, lead, neon, tin and zinc are short enough that one letter changes the word. Aluminum, cesium and sulphur count alongside the IUPAC spellings, and so does wolfram for tungsten. In symbols mode the symbol has to be right, though case does not matter.
Why are two rows sitting under the table?
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Why are two rows sitting under the table?
›They belong in period 6 and period 7, between barium and hafnium and between radium and rutherfordium. Put in place, they would make the table 32 columns wide, so nearly every chart prints them underneath. The two squares in group 3 marked 57–71 and 89–103 show where they would go. This game uses the layout most classrooms do, with lanthanum to lutetium and actinium to lawrencium in the loose rows.
Is lutetium or lanthanum in group 3?
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Is lutetium or lanthanum in group 3?
›Chemists still disagree. An IUPAC project set up in 2015 came out in favour of scandium, yttrium, lutetium and lawrencium in its 2021 report, which would leave rows of 14 underneath. Most printed charts still use the older form with a pointer in group 3 and rows of 15, and that is the one here. Either way the elements and their numbers are the same, so it only changes which square you click.
Which elements are the hardest to name?
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Which elements are the hardest to name?
›The long rows. Most people can do the first 20 and the familiar metals, then get stuck on the lanthanides, where praseodymium, dysprosium and the four elements named after one Swedish village sit side by side. The superheavy elements from rutherfordium to oganesson are the other hard patch, because most were named in the last 30 years after laboratories and physicists.
Should I start with names or symbols?
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Should I start with names or symbols?
›Names, for most people. Symbols are quicker to type but eleven of them come from another word altogether, such as Fe for iron, Pb for lead and W for tungsten, and a few pairs are easy to swap, such as Ag and Au. Names mode tells you the symbol after each answer, so playing it first teaches the symbols along the way.
Where the names come from
Most element names describe something a chemist saw: a colour, a smell, the mineral it came out of. The rest honour a place, a person, a planet or a god, and those are easier to remember once you know the story. Every name below is explained in a line, grouped by what it honours.
The 11 symbols that do not match the name
These are the ones that cost points in symbols mode. Ten come from Latin names that were in use when the symbols were set in the early 1800s, and tungsten's W comes from its German name.
- Sodium Na · 11
- The symbol comes from natrium, its Latin name. Humphry Davy called it sodium in 1807, after soda.
- Potassium K · 19
- The symbol comes from kalium, its Latin name, from the Arabic for plant ash. Potassium is from potash.
- Iron Fe · 26
- The symbol comes from ferrum, the Latin for iron.
- Copper Cu · 29
- The symbol comes from cuprum, Latin for the metal of Cyprus, where the Romans mined it.
- Silver Ag · 47
- The symbol comes from argentum, Latin for silver. Argentina is named after the metal.
- Tin Sn · 50
- The symbol comes from stannum, the Latin for tin.
- Antimony Sb · 51
- The symbol comes from stibium, the Latin name for its black sulfide, which was worn as eyeliner.
- Tungsten W · 74
- The symbol comes from wolfram, its German name. Tungsten is Swedish for heavy stone.
- Gold Au · 79
- The symbol comes from aurum, the Latin for gold.
- Mercury Hg · 80
- The symbol comes from hydrargyrum, Latin from the Greek for water silver. The name is the planet's.
- Lead Pb · 82
- The symbol comes from plumbum, the Latin for lead, which also gave English the word plumber.
16 elements named after people
Samarium and gadolinium came first, around 1880, and only through the minerals they were found in. The rest were made in laboratories from the 1940s on and named mostly after physicists. Two were named while the person was alive: seaborgium in 1997 and oganesson in 2016.
- Samarium Sm · 62
- Named after the mineral samarskite, itself named after the Russian mining engineer Vasili Samarsky-Bykhovets, the first person to have an element named after him, if indirectly.
- Gadolinium Gd · 64
- Named after the Finnish chemist Johan Gadolin, through the mineral gadolinite.
- Curium Cm · 96
- Named after Marie and Pierre Curie, to match gadolinium in the row above, which is named after a chemist.
- Einsteinium Es · 99
- Named after Albert Einstein. It was first found in the debris of the first hydrogen bomb test, in 1952.
- Fermium Fm · 100
- Named after Enrico Fermi. It was found in the same 1952 bomb debris as einsteinium.
- Mendelevium Md · 101
- Named after Dmitri Mendeleev, who drew up the periodic table in 1869.
- Nobelium No · 102
- Named after Alfred Nobel.
- Lawrencium Lr · 103
- Named after Ernest Lawrence, who invented the cyclotron.
- Rutherfordium Rf · 104
- Named after Ernest Rutherford.
- Seaborgium Sg · 106
- Named after Glenn Seaborg in 1997, while he was still alive.
- Bohrium Bh · 107
- Named after Niels Bohr.
- Meitnerium Mt · 109
- Named after Lise Meitner, who helped explain nuclear fission.
- Roentgenium Rg · 111
- Named after Wilhelm Röntgen, who discovered X-rays.
- Copernicium Cn · 112
- Named after Nicolaus Copernicus, announced on his 537th birthday in 2010.
- Flerovium Fl · 114
- Named after Georgy Flyorov, the Soviet physicist who founded the laboratory at Dubna.
- Oganesson Og · 118
- Named in 2016 after Yuri Oganessian, while he was alive. The -on ending follows the noble gases above it.
28 elements named after places
Countries, continents, cities, American states, a river and a laboratory. One quarry at Ytterby, outside Stockholm, accounts for four of them, and Stockholm, Copenhagen and Paris appear under their Latin names.
- Magnesium Mg · 12
- Named after Magnesia, a district of Thessaly in Greece, through the minerals that came from there.
- Scandium Sc · 21
- Named after Scandinavia. Mendeleev predicted it as eka-boron in 1871, eight years before Lars Nilson found it.
- Gallium Ga · 31
- Named after Gallia, Latin for France, by its French discoverer Paul-Émile Lecoq de Boisbaudran in 1875.
- Germanium Ge · 32
- Named after Germany by Clemens Winkler in 1886. Mendeleev had predicted it as eka-silicon.
- Strontium Sr · 38
- Named after Strontian, a village in the Scottish Highlands whose lead mines yielded the mineral.
- Yttrium Y · 39
- Named after Ytterby, a village near Stockholm whose quarry gave its name to four elements: yttrium, terbium, erbium and ytterbium.
- Ruthenium Ru · 44
- From Ruthenia, a Latin name for Russia. Karl Klaus found it in Kazan in 1844.
- Europium Eu · 63
- Named after Europe.
- Terbium Tb · 65
- One of the four elements named after Ytterby, Sweden.
- Holmium Ho · 67
- From Holmia, the Latin name for Stockholm.
- Erbium Er · 68
- One of the four elements named after Ytterby, Sweden.
- Thulium Tm · 69
- Named after Thule, the far north of ancient maps, here standing for Scandinavia.
- Ytterbium Yb · 70
- One of the four elements named after Ytterby, Sweden.
- Lutetium Lu · 71
- From Lutetia, the Latin name for Paris.
- Hafnium Hf · 72
- From Hafnia, the Latin name for Copenhagen, where it was found in 1923.
- Rhenium Re · 75
- Named after the Rhine, Rhenus in Latin. Found in 1925, it was the last stable element to be discovered.
- Polonium Po · 84
- Named after Poland by the Polish-born Marie Curie in 1898, when Poland did not exist as a country.
- Francium Fr · 87
- Named after France by Marguerite Perey, who found it in 1939. It was the last element discovered in nature.
- Americium Am · 95
- Named after the Americas, to match europium in the row above.
- Berkelium Bk · 97
- Named after Berkeley, California, where it was made in 1949.
- Californium Cf · 98
- Named after California and its university.
- Dubnium Db · 105
- Named after Dubna, the Russian town of the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research.
- Hassium Hs · 108
- Named after Hesse, Hassia in Latin, the German state where it was made.
- Darmstadtium Ds · 110
- Named after Darmstadt, Germany, where it was made in 1994.
- Nihonium Nh · 113
- From Nihon, a Japanese name for Japan. Named in 2016, it was the first element discovered in Asia.
- Moscovium Mc · 115
- Named in 2016 after the Moscow region, where Dubna lies.
- Livermorium Lv · 116
- Named after Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, in 2012.
- Tennessine Ts · 117
- Named in 2016 after Tennessee, home of the Oak Ridge laboratory. The -ine ending follows the halogens above it.
8 named after the sky
Uranium, neptunium and plutonium follow the planets in order. Cerium and palladium were named after asteroids within a year or two of their discovery, when both were still counted as planets.
- Helium He · 2
- Named after Helios, the Greek Sun. It was seen in sunlight in 1868, 27 years before anyone found it on Earth.
- Selenium Se · 34
- Named after Selene, the Greek Moon, by Berzelius, because it resembled tellurium, which is named after the Earth.
- Palladium Pd · 46
- Named after the asteroid Pallas, discovered the year before.
- Tellurium Te · 52
- From tellus, the Latin for Earth.
- Cerium Ce · 58
- Named after Ceres, the dwarf planet found two years earlier.
- Uranium U · 92
- Named after Uranus, discovered eight years earlier.
- Neptunium Np · 93
- Named after Neptune, the planet after Uranus, as it is the element after uranium.
- Plutonium Pu · 94
- Named after Pluto, next in line after Neptune and still counted as a planet.
9 from myth and miners' folklore
Figures from Greek and Norse myth, and two goblins. Cobalt and nickel are named after the spirits German miners blamed for ores that looked rich and gave no copper.
- Titanium Ti · 22
- Martin Klaproth named it after the Titans of Greek myth.
- Vanadium V · 23
- Named after Vanadís, a name of the Norse goddess Freyja, for the many colours of its compounds.
- Cobalt Co · 27
- Named after the kobold, the goblin German miners blamed for ores that gave off poisonous fumes and no copper.
- Nickel Ni · 28
- From Kupfernickel, the miners' name for an ore that looked like copper and gave none. Nickel was a mischievous sprite.
- Niobium Nb · 41
- Named after Niobe, daughter of Tantalus, because it is so often found with tantalum.
- Promethium Pm · 61
- Named after Prometheus, who stole fire from the gods. It has no stable form and was only confirmed in 1945.
- Tantalum Ta · 73
- Named after Tantalus, who stood in water he could never drink, because the metal takes up no acid.
- Iridium Ir · 77
- Named after Iris, the Greek goddess of the rainbow, for its colourful salts.
- Thorium Th · 90
- Named after Thor, the Norse god of thunder.