Intro: What is the periodic table? The periodic table is a rectangle that every one to day recognizes. This function of grouping the chemical elements was created by several European scientists; it all started in the 1860’s. In 1863, a French geologist, A. E. Béguyer de Chancourtois created a list of the elements in the periodic table and arranged the elements by increasing atomic weight. The list was wrapped around a cylinder so that sets …showed first 75 words of 861 total…

…showed last 75 words of 861 total…hooked up to others in a solid or a liquid. When enough energy is added to an atom the outermost electron can use that energy to pull away from the nucleus completely, leaving behind a positively charged ion. That is why it's called ionization; one of the things formed in the process is an ion. The ionization energy is the exact quantity of energy that it takes to remove the outermost electron from the atom.