How come there are no gaps in the table? If there are 118 elements currently, and the next element to be discovered/created has an atomic number of 120, would there just be a gap at 119th position?
How come we managed to find/create every element without any gaps in the periodic table?
In: 104
Originally the periodic table did have gaps, and that’s part of why making it was so important: it told us what we were missing. The number on the periodic table, known as an “atomic number” is how many protons an atom of that element has. So hydrogen is number 1 and has 1 proton, platinum is number 78 and has 78 protons, and so on.
When we initially made the periodic table there were gaps, those gaps told us we were missing something, so we started to look. For example when the periodic table was created in 1869 we had discovered moldybenium, which has 42 protons, and ruthenium, which has 44 protons, but didn’t have something with 43 protons. By putting them on that table we were able to realize this, we were able to notice these gaps and say “well if there are elements with 1 proton, and 2 protons, and 3 protons (all the way up to 42) and ones with 44 protons, and 45 protons, etc., so there must be something with 43 protons that we haven’t found yet.” So we started looking and in 1937 a scientist named Emilio Segre discovered technetium, an element with 43 protons.
That said we don’t necessarily go up by 1 at a time. Not everything on the period table is a naturally occurring element, some of them are synthetic. Uranium, element 92, is the heaviest element that exists in sizable quantities, though it looks like there may be some naturally occurring sources of californium, element 98. Long story short most elements heavier than Uranium were synthesized in a lab. These synthetic elements often go up by 1, but they don’t necessarily go up by 1, which can leave gaps. For example Meitnerium (109), was discovered two years before Hassium (108). The heaviest element we have, Oganesson (118), was discovered before Nihonium (113), Moscovium (115), and Tennessine (117). If the next element we synthesize was to have 120 protons there would just be a gap at 119 until we got synthesized something with 119 protons.
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