96% of people can't answer these Periodic Table questions correctly. Can you?

By: Narra Jackson
Estimated Completion Time
3 min
96% of people can't answer these Periodic Table questions correctly. Can you?
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About This Quiz

The periodic table has gone through many updates since it was first created. It shows the simple building blocks of our universe. Test your skills and see how well you can recognize these elements!
What year was the Periodic Table invented?
1900
1687
1869
The Periodic Table was invented by a Russian chemist by the name of Dimitri Mendeleev in 1869.
1845

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How was Dimitri Mendeleev arranging the elements?
Alphabetically
By type of element
Arbitraruly
By atomic mass
Dimitri Mendeleev began to arrange the chemical elements by their atomic mass. He also predicted the discovery of other elements, and left open spaces in his periodic table for them.

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Who discovered Beryllium?
Nicholas Louis Vauquelin
Beryllium was discovered by none other than Nicholas Louis Vauquelin way back in the day, in 1797.
Johan Gottlieb Gahn
William Crookes
Charles Hatchett

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Who was the first person to ever discover a new element?
William Odling
Hennig Brand
The first person in history to discover a new element was Hennig Brand, a bankrupt German merchant. His experiments began with distilling human urine which resulted in a glowing white substance.
Lothar Meyer
Henry Moseley

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How is an element defined?
A chemical
The simplest substance
An element in its most basic definition is that it is chemically the simplest substance and therefore cannot be broken down using chemical methods.
A complex substance
Non-artificial

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When was the newest element discovered?
2015
2016
2014
2013
In 2013, Swedish scientists confirmed the existence of ununpentium which was a Russian discovery.

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How was ununpentium discovered?
combining other elements
melting two elements together
shooting one element through another
As it was described, ununpentium was produced by "shooting a beam of calcium, which has 20 protons, into a thin film of americium, which has 95 protons." The elements lasted less than a second, and was a new elements for that half second at 115 protons.
freezing two elements together

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What was Iridium named after?
A stone
An alkalin
A chemist
A Greek goddess
Iridium was discovered in 1803 by Smithson Tennant. The origin of the name is derived from the Greek goddess of the rainbow. Her name was Iris.

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What was Polonium named after?
It's native country
Polonium is named after Poland, the native country of Marie Curie, who is the person who first isolated the element in 1898.
Greek mythology
The group of discoverers
It's electron configuration

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What is Bohrium used for?
For random purposes
Only in combination with other elements
To make metal
Research
Bohrium is a highly radioactive metal and so at present it is used in research only. Bohrium has no known biological role, and does not occur naturally.

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Weird thing about Radon?
It was discovered by total accident
It is derived from Radium
It is odorless and colorless
Radon is a colorless and odorless gas. It is chemically inert, but also radioactive. The name is derived from Radium, as it was first detected as an emission from radium during radioactive decay.
It has a huge atomic mass

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Which element is known as liquid silver?
Magnesium
Zinc
Copper
Mercury
Mercury, also called quicksilver is named after the Greek word hydrargyrum which means watery or liquid silver. Mercury is one of the few elements that is liquid at room temperature.

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Which element is the eighth most abundant in the earth's crust?
Magnesium
Magnesium is in fact the eighth most abundant element in the earth's crust. However, it is not found in nature in its elemental form. It is a Group 2 element which means it is an alkaline earth metal.
Krypton
Curium
Strontium

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Which element is present in the air about 1 part per million?
Lutetium
Oxygen
Krypton
Krypton is present in the air we breath, about 1 part per million. The atmosphere of Mars also contains a little bit of krypton. It is characterized by its brilliant green and orange spectral lines. Normally, though, krypton is colorless, odorless, and a fairly expensive gas.
Carbon Dioxide

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Which element is named after physicist Marie Curie?
Meitnerium
Curium
Curium is named after this popular physicist Marie Curie. It is created by bombarding plutonium with helium ions. It is so radioactive it glows in the dark. Curium is produced in very small amounts each year and was used on a Mars mission as an alpha particle source for the Alpha Proton X-Ray Spectrometer.
Chromium
Magnesium

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Which element can spontaneously ignite in air?
Strontium
Strontium is an elemental metal that can in fact spontaneously ignite in air. It is softer than calcium and decomposes in water very quickly. Freshly cut strontium has a silvery appearance, but rapidly turns a yellowish color with the formation of the oxide.
Lutetium
Chlorine
Aluminum

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Which element did Georges Urbain discover?
Selenium
Antimony
Lutetium
In 1907 Georges Urbain was credited with the discovery of this element and won the right to name it. He originally called it lutecium which was later changed to the spelling of lutetium by chemists. Lutetium is primarily obtained through an ion exchange process from monazite sand, a material rich in rare earth elements.
Cadmium

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Which element should you never mix with ammonia?
Magnesium
Hydrogen
Chlorine
We all already know not to mix chlorine and ammonia, right? Hopefully! Besides that chlorine is in many everyday products. Besides cleansing drinking water worldwide, it is used in the production of paper products, dyes, textiles, petroleum products, medicines, antiseptics, insecticides, food, solvents, paints, plastics, and many other products.
Carbon

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Which element has electrical conductivity about 60% of what copper has?
Indium
Gallium
Thallium
Aluminum
We all know about aluminum because it is so widely used in our consumer products. Although aluminums electrical conductivity is only 60% of coppers, it is used in electrical transmission lines because it is so lightweight. Pure aluminum is soft and lacks strength, but allowed with small amounts of copper, magnesium, silicon, manganese, or other elements impart a variety of useful properties.

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Element used by the chemical industry where corrosive agents are used?
Zirconium
Zirconium is the elements used when chemical companies are employing corrosive agents at their facilities. Zirconium oxide has a high index refraction and is used as a gem material. Most of the zirconium produced is in fact used as refractory material.
Hafnium
Titanium
Rutherfordium

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When was nitrogen discovered?
1819
1789
1772
Nitrogen was discovered by Daniel Rutherford in the year 1772. Its name is derived from the Greek word 'nitron' and 'genes' meaning nitre forming. It was originally manufactured in Egypt by heating a mixture of dung, salt, and urine.
1828

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When was neon discovered?
1888
1929
1898
In 1898, Sir William Ramsay and Morris Travers discovered neon. They were at the University College London and they isolated krypton gas by evaporating liquid argon. Ramsay named the new gas neon, basing it on news, the Greek word for new.
1949

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What year was lithium discovered?
1812
1817
The first lithium mineral petalite was discovered on the Swedish island of Uto by the Brazilian Joze Bonifacio de Andralda e Silva in the 1790s. It was observed to give an intense crimson flare when thrown into a fire. In 1817, Johan Auguat Arfvedson of Stockholm analyzed it and deduced it contained a previously unknown metal, which he called lithium.
1826
1877

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When do people best guess silver was discovered?
approx 5000 BC
approx 2000 BC
approx 3000 BC
No one really knows when silver was discovered as it dates before there was proper documentation of these things. The best guess by historians and chemists is that it was discovered approximately 3000 BC. The name is derived from the Anglo-Saxon name, 'siolfur'
approx 4000 BC

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How did scientists determine the elements individual weights?
on a scale
heated them until each was close to evaporation
passed them through various solutions
To determine each elements weight, scientist had to pass currents through various solutions to break them up into their constituent atoms. Just like a battery's polarity, the atoms of one element would go one way while the atoms of another would go the other way. They would then collect each group of atoms in separate containers and weigh them.
weighed them at their natural state at room temperature

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What card game inspired the organization of elements?
Speed
Gin rummy
Black Jack
Solitaire
The creator of the periodic table Mendeleyev was quite fond of the game solitaire, so he organized the elements as such. He wrote the weight for each element on a separate index card and sorted them like in solitaire. Elements with similar properties formed a "suit" that he placed in colluded order by ascending atomic weight.

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An element that Mendeleyev correctly predicted as far as weight and chemical behavior prior to its discovery?
Scandium
Mendeleyev correctly guessed a couple of the elements weights and chemical behaviors prior to their discovery. Gallium, scandium, and germanium were three that he correctly predicted.
Silicon
Helium
Xenon

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An element that Mendeleyev denied its existence?
Ruthenium
Tellurium
neon
There were actually a number of elements who's existence Mendeleyev denied. When argon was discovered in 1894, it didn't fit with his model of columns so he just denied its existence. He did this with helium, neon, krypton, xenon, and radon also.
potassium

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Characteristic of Noble gases?
They are all colorless and odorless
They are all chemically created
They are nearly inert
The thing that Noble gases all have in common, which are the gases on the far right of the periodic table, is that they all have closed shells of electrons. This is why they are mostly inert.
They all react harshly with other elements

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What makes Carbon a key molecule for life?
Strong structure
Chemical flexibility
A key about carbon atoms is that they bond in very long chains and create things like... sugars. The chemical flexibility of carbon is what makes it the key molecule of life.
Long structure
Unstable nuclei

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What number is considered an impossible number of protons for an element to have?
138
Physicist Richard Feynman once predicted that number 137 defined the table's outer limit. He says adding more protons would produce energy that could be quantified only by an imaginary number, rendering element 138 and higher impossible... for now.
155
142
126

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Which group of elements bond well?
Group 2
Group 1
Group 5
Group 4
The Group 4 elements in the middle bond readily with each other and themselves. Silicon + silicon + silicon ad infinitum links up into crystalline lattices, used to make semiconductors for computers.

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At what number do atoms not exist naturally?
101
96
92
Atoms with atomic numbers higher than 92 do not exist naturally, but they can be created by bombarding elements with other elements or pieces of them.
87

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Fun periodic table fact
There is a trick to finding which ones will combine with each other
Take the modern periodic table, cut out the complicated middle columns, and fold it once along the middle of the Group 4 elements. The groups that kiss have complementary electron structures and will combine with each other.
There is a trick to finding out which ones will be explosive with one another
There is way to guess and estimate the atomic weights
They all have two things in common

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What was a wrong assumption on Mendeleyev's part?
All elements are unchanging
Indeed Mendeleyev, among other misassumptions, assumed that all elements are unchanging. In fact, we know now that this is definitely not true. Radioactive atoms have unstable nuclei, meaning they can move around the chart. For example, uranium gradually decays a whole series of lighter elements, ending with lead.
Every pattern is true 100% of the time
Certain elements can't physically exist
There can only be a certain number of elements

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