Smith (19198)

[Rene]

This table is from Smith A 1918, General Chemistry for Colleges, 2nd ed., The Century Co., New York, p. 299

Items of interest

• H is missing, as are the noble gases
• Consequently, the period numbers are out by one apiece
• Seven groups are on the left and seven are on the right (the ever present allure of symmetry)
• After La, Ce is placed under Zr, and Nd is placed under columbium/technetium. According to Smith the rest of the lanthanide elements do not fit into any series, because their valences and other chemical properties do not permit most of them to be distributed over so many different groups.
• Po is expected to be a metal which is what it turned out to be

• Smith has anticipated that astatine will be a metal. Nine decades later, Hermann, Hoffmann & Ashcroft (2013) predicted the same thing.
• While he does not discuss it, Smith appears to have allowed for missing elements between Li and Gl and between Na and Mg
• The three elements inside square brackets are those predicted by Mendeleev.

René

• Hermann, A.; Hoffmann, R.; Ashcroft, N. W. (2013). "Condensed astatine: Monatomic and metallic". Physical Review Letters. 111 (11): 116404-1–116404-5

[John Marks]

Dear René,

I´m surprised you didn´t note his "reverse Vernon"😊: 

Smith shifts the first two members of Group II (Be, Mg) to Group IIA (over Zn, Cd, Hg), whereas you usually shift the first two members of Group III (B, Al) in the reverse direction to Group IIIA (over Y, Lu).

John

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Subject: Smith (19198)

 

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[Rene]

On 25 Apr 2024, at 19:30, John Marks <johnm...@hotmail.com> wrote:

Dear René,

I´m surprised you didn´t note his "reverse Vernon"😊: 

Smith shifts the first two members of Group II (Be, Mg) to Group IIA (over Zn, Cd, Hg), whereas you usually shift the first two members of Group III (B, Al) in the reverse direction to Group IIIA (over Y, Lu).

John

Nice one John. I’m reminded of Bent punning on his name via HeBe.

Elsewhere in Smith’s book he reckons that hydrogen is the only common element whose place is still in debate.

It seems to me that periodic tables with B-Al over Sc-Y-La-Ac can now be referred to as reverse periodic tables or ("ReVer" or "rhenium vanadium erbium" or RV or ReV) tables since they reverse the move of B-Al away from over Sc to over Ga, that occurred from the 1930’s onwards.

René