Sir William Ramsay, the Scottish chemist who discovered several noble gases, is the subject of today’s Google doodle. The noble gases are a group of chemical elements with very low reactivity. They ...

When you see the periodic table, what comes to mind? The pieces on a Scrabble board? Maybe you think about your high school chemistry class. Maybe you think of the colorful table plastered on the wall ...

The noble gases, which reside on the East Coast of the periodic table, are its aristocrats—detached and aloof, never bothering to interact with the rabble of common elements that make up the vast ...

The story of the fifteenth element began in Hamburg, in 1669. The unsuccessful glassblower and alchemist Hennig Brandt was trying to find the philosopher’s stone, a mythical substance that could turn ...

Elements heavier than uranium don’t exist naturally on Earth. Researchers make these massive elements at the end of the periodic table by smashing existing atoms together in particle accelerators.

On the periodic table, most elements have at least one stable form. But others have only unstable forms, all of which decay by emitting radiation and transforming into different elements until ...

The seventh row of the periodic table is officially full. On December 30, the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry announced that a Russian-U.S. collaboration had attained sufficient ...

McGill University provides funding as a member of The Conversation CA. McGill University provides funding as a member of The Conversation CA-FR. The United Nations announced 2019 as the International ...

At one point, while drowning in research for The Disappearing Spoon, I could pretty much name every element on the periodic table, in order. I was more than happy to let this "talent" lapse, ...