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
The numbers in the periodic table are based on the number of protons that a particular atom has. Since protons are (for the sake of this ELI5) an indivisible unit, the periodic table can’t have any gaps – you can’t have half a proton in the nucleus of an atom.
We arrange them based on proton number because _that_ is what determines the nature of the atom itself. Atoms routinely gain or lose electrons, and while increased/decreased neutrons create isotopes that have _slightly_ different properties it is the proton that determines how the atom will behave.
This knowledge is what allowed us to construct the table, even when we had yet to discover particular atoms – we _knew_ they would be there because we can extrapolate the number of protons in the gap. This was the case for Technetium, which was only discovered in 1937, while the table itself dates back to 1869.
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