Periodic Table Milestones

Have students create a timeline that illustrates how ideas of elements and the periodic table have changed over time. You can use this activity to highlight how science needs scientists to collaboratively work together to share findings to further human understanding. Students can also highlight how scientific discoveries can directly benefit the human race and lead to important inventions.

For an alternative to the timeline layout, have students create a timeline poster to incorporate into a presentation or gallery walk. You can add more than one template to this assignment to give students lots of options and adjust the instructions accordingly.

Suggested Milestones and Important Discoveries

• Copper in the Middle East in 9,000 BCE
• Phosphorous by Hennig Brand in 1669
• Cobalt by Georg Brandt in 1735
• Nickel by Axel Fredrik Cronstedt in 1751
• Early List of Elements by Lavoisier in 1789
• Magnesium by Humphry Davy in 1801
• Hydrogen by Henry Cavendish in 1766
• Oxygen by Carl Wilhelm Scheele in 1771
• Nitrogen by Daniel Rutherford in 1772
• Chlorine by Carl Wilhelm Scheele in 1774
• Uranium by Martin Heinrich Klaproth in 1789
• Palladium by William Hyde Wollaston in 1803
• Sodium by Humphry Davy in 1807
• Periodic Table Created by Dmitri Mendeleev in 1869
• Gallium by Paul-Émile Lecoq de Boisbaudran in 1875
• Francium by Maguerite Perey in 1939
• Berkelium by a group of scientists at University of California, Berkeley in 1949
• Californium by a group of scientists at University of California, Berkeley in 1950
• Einsteinium in 1952
• Tennessine in Dubna, Russia in 2010