Mendeleev's predicted elements

Professor Dmitri Mendeleev published the first Periodic Table of the Atomic Elements in 1869 based on properties which appeared with some regularity as he laid out the elements from lightest to heaviest.^[1] When Mendeleev proposed his periodic table, he noted gaps in the table, and predicted that as-of-yet unknown elements existed with properties appropriate to fill those gaps.

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Original predictions from 1869

To give provisional names to his predicted elements, Mendeleev used the prefixes eka-, dvi-, and tri-, from the Sanskrit words for one, two, and three, depending upon whether the predicted element was one, two, or three places down from the known element in his table with similar chemical properties.

The four predicted elements lighter than the rare earth elements, ekaboron (Eb), ekaaluminum (El), ekamanganese (Em), and ekasilicon (Es), proved to be good predictors of the properties of scandium, gallium, technetium and germanium respectively, which each fill the spot in the periodic table assigned by Mendeleev. Initial versions of the periodic table did not give the rare earth elements the treatment now given them, helping to explain both why Mendeleev’s predictions for heavier unknown elements did not fare as well as those for the lightest predictions and why they are not as well known or documented.

Nowadays, the prefix eka- (and, more rarely, dvi-) is sometimes used in discussions about undiscovered elements, such as untriennium, a.k.a. eka-actinium or dvi-lanthanum.

Ekaboron and scandium

Scandium was isolated as the oxide in spring, 1879, by Lars Fredrick Nilson; Per Teodor Cleve recognized the correspondence and notified Mendeleev late in that year. Mendeleev had predicted an atomic mass of 44 for ekaboron in 1871 while scandium has an atomic mass of 44.955910.

Ekaaluminium and gallium

In 1871 Mendeleev predicted the existence of yet undiscovered element he named eka-aluminum (because of its proximity to aluminum in the periodic table). The table below compares the qualities of the element predicted by Mendeleev with actual characteristics of Gallium (discovered in 1875).

Ekamanganese and technetium

Technetium was isolated by Carlo Perrier and Emilio Segrè in 1937, well after Mendeleev’s lifetime, from samples of molybdenum that had been bombarded with deuterium nuclei in a cyclotron by Ernest Lawrence. Mendeleev had predicted an atomic mass of 100 for ekamanganese in 1871 and the most stable isotope of technetium is ⁹⁸Tc. ^[2]

Ekasilicon and germanium

Germanium was isolated in 1882, and provided the best confirmation of the theory up to that time, due to its contrasting more clearly with its neighboring elements than the two previously confirmed predictions of Mendeleev do with theirs.

1871 predictions

The existence of an element between thorium and uranium was predicted by Mendeleev in 1871. In 1900 William Crookes isolated protactinium as a radioactive material from uranium which he could not identify. Different isotopes of protactinium were identified in Germany in 1913 and in 1918^[3], but the name protactinium was not given until 1949.

Mendeleev's 1869 table had implicitly predicted a heavier analog of titanium and zirconium, but in 1871 he placed lanthanum in that spot. The 1923 discovery of hafnium validated Mendeleev's original 1869 prediction.

Later predictions of elements coronium and ether

In 1902, having accepted the evidence for elements helium and argon, Mendeleev placed these Noble Gases in Group 0 in his arrangement of the elements.^[4] As Mendeleev was doubtful of atomic theory to explain the Law of definite proportions, he had no a priori reason to believe hydrogen was the lightest of elements, and suggested that a hypothetical lighter member of these chemically inert Group 0 elements could have gone undetected and be responsible for radioactivity.

The heavier of the hypothetical proto-helium elements Mendeleev identified with coronium, named by association with an unexplained spectral line in the Sun's corona. A faulty calibration gave a wavelength of 531.68 nm, which was eventually corrected to 530.3 nm, which Grotrian and Edlen identified as originating from Fe XIV in 1939.^[5]

The lightest of the Zero Group gases, the first in the Periodic Table, was assigned a theoretical atomic mass between 5.3 x 10^-11 and 9.6 x 10^-7. The kinetic velocity of this gas was calculated by Mendeleev to be 2,500,000 meters per second. Nearly massless, these gases were assumed by Mendeleev to permeate all matter, rarely interacting chemically. The high mobility and very small mass of the trans-hydrogen gases would result in the situation, that they could be rarefied, yet appear to be very dense. ^[6] Mendeleev was so confident that these atomic elements would be discovered, that he included them in later publications of the periodic chart, although there was no physical evidence for their existence available at the time.^{[citation needed]}

Mendeleev later published a theoretical expression of the ether, which satisfied^{[citation needed]} many of the contradictions which existed in physics at that time, in a small booklet entitled, A Chemical Conception of the Ether, in 1904. His 1904 publication again contained two atomic elements smaller and lighter than hydrogen. He treated the “ether gas” as an interstellar atmosphere composed of at least two lighter-than-hydrogen elements. He stated that these gases originated due to violent bombardments internal to stars, the sun being the most prolific source of such gases. According to Mendeleev's booklet, the interstellar atmosphere was probably composed of several additional elemental species.

In 1905, Albert Einstein demonstrated that Brownian motion resulted as the natural consequence of the atomic theory. Later, atomic number was determined to be more natural than atomic weight in classifying the elements. While Mendeleev's genius persists in the arrangement of the periodic table, the lightest element was finally confirmed to be hydrogen, with atomic number 1.

Notes and references

1. ^ Kaji, Masanori (2002). "D.I.Mendeleev's concept of chemical elements and The Principles of Chemistry". Bulletin for the History of Chemistry 27 (1): 4-16.
2. ^ This is atomic mass number of 98 which is distinct from an atomic mass in that it is a count of nucleons in the nucleus of one isotope and is not an actual weight of an average sample (with a natural collection of isotopes) relative to ¹²C. The ⁹⁸Tc isotope has a mass of 97.907214. For elements which are not stable enough to persist from the creation of the Earth, the convention is to report the atomic mass number of the most stable isotope in place of the naturally occurring atomic mass average. [1]
3. ^ Emsley, John (2001). Nature's Building Blocks, (Hardcover, First Edition), Oxford University Press, page 347. ISBN 0198503407. 
4. ^ Mendeleev, D. (1902-1903). Osnovy Khimii [The Principles of Chemistry], 7th edition (in Russian). 
5. ^ Swings, P. (July 1943). "Edlén's Identification of the Coronal Lines with Forbidden Lines of Fe X, XI, XIII, XIV, XV; Ni XII, XIII, XV, XVI; Ca XII, XIII, XV; a X, XIV". Astrophysical Journal 98: 116-124. doi:10.1086/144550.and [2]
6. ^ Mendeleev, D. (1903). Popytka khimicheskogo ponimaniia mirovogo efira (in Russian). 
   An English translation appeared as
   Mendeléeff, D. (1904). in G. Kamensky (translator): An Attempt Towards A Chemical Conception Of The Ether. Longmans, Green & Co.. 
   See also
   Bensaude-Vincent, Bernadette (1982). "L’éther, élément chimique: un essai malheureux de Mendéleev en 1904". British Journal for the History of Science 15: 183-188.

Further reading

• Scerri, Eric (2007). The Periodic Table: Its Story and Its Significance. New York: Oxford University Press.