Too proud to say “I don’t know, I’ll look it up and tell you tomorrow”.
Comment on Anon describes experience
whostosay@lemmy.world 3 weeks agoI asked my science teacher why and how the periodic table was setup like it was, I got “that’s how it’s setup up”
But why, there as to be a reason
That’s just the way they made it
Yeah because they have to have gone by something what is that something
That’s just the way they did, stop asking questions (please don’t fucking learn in here)
Godamn that pissed me off.
Kanda@reddthat.com 3 weeks ago
whostosay@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Yeah, that wouldve been a great opportunity to get me further interested.
I have never been in a job where “I don’t know” is an acceptable answer, but I’ve always been in a job where “I don’t know, but I can find out for you” always is.
TabbsTheBat@pawb.social 3 weeks ago
Really? We got a detailed breakdown of why the periodic table is the way it is
whostosay@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Yeah, turned me off to science at that age too which sucks because I was pretty into it.
gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de 3 weeks ago
in case you still care: the periodic table is arranged primarily by the chemical properties of its elements (mainly electronegativity, i.e. how much energy it takes to add/remove an electron to/from the atom) and also by their mass.
Ziglin@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Huh? It’s sorted by number of electrons/protons (atomic number) the mass is dependent on that and the number of neutrons.
The eight main groups are based on the number of electrons missing for the atom to reach a full valence shell. Once it is full (8th group, noble gasses) it starts a new Period (row). I’m not sure how the other groups are chosen (probably some quantum physics that I never had in chemistry class). After looking it up Wikipedia says it just keeps going that way.
Electronegativity describes how much it “wants” to attract negative charges and doesn’t affect the order (Flourine has the highest and is in group 7). I think you may have confused it with ionization energy which would certainly match my understanding of the top half of the periodic table and probably does work for the lower half too now that I think about it.
The groups tend to have similar properties but that is not why they are sorted that way. Hydrogen for example is quite different from other elements in group one. The colours are probably better for finding common properties.
whostosay@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I do friend, I ended up looking into a few years later/have other teachers explain it but I never had that spark about it again