Expert: George Maxwell - 9/22/2007

Question
QUESTION: Can the letters in the periodic table of elemnts be vertical?

ANSWER: Hi, and thanks for your question.

I'm not quite sure what you mean, so I've put some relevant information below. I hope this helps, but let me know if I've missed the point.

The periodic table is a way of presenting the names of all of the chemical elements we currently know about. It's a special tool because, rather than just listing the names, it groups together elements that have similar properties.

Each element is given a one, two or three letter symbol to make the table more concise.

Elements are listed in order of increasing atomic mass, starting at the top left and going towards the right. However, elements with similar characteristics are placed in vertical columns, within the general pattern of increasing atomic mass.

The horizontal rows in the table are called periods, and the vertical columns are called groups.

Overall in the table, the elements are listetd so that the further you are to the right of a period, and the nearer you are to the bottom of a group, the higher the atomic mass of the elemets you find there.

Put simply, the lightest atoms are in the top left of the table, and the heaviest atoms are in the bottom right, with a corresponding patttern between them.

Hope this helps.



---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: It helped a lot! But my question was can the names of the elements be written vertically instead of horizontally?

Like Gold is Au, can it be written

A
u, instead of Au?

Answer
Hi, and thanks for the follow-up.

Element abbreviations are never written vertically for two reasons.

1) They're abbreviaions, like A.M: the two letters have to follow on from each other for it to make sense. In your example, Au is used to represent gold because it stands for "Aurum", which is latin for "Golden Glow".

2) In some cases,it could be confusing to split up symbols. For example, Co is used to represent Cobalt, but C by itself would represent Carbon and O by itself would repressnt Oxygen.

Hope this helps: the basic answer is that you should treat element symbols like any other abbreviation: you wouldn't break up "e.g.",  "etc" and similar abbreviations vertically.

Thanks again for your question.