Activity____

The Periodic Table: It’s Element-ary!

Material Needed
periodic table of elements

Procedure
Every element has a name. In each box of the
table, you will find only one name. One box
corresponds to one element.

Using the partial figure of the periodic table

on the right, find where oxygen is.

For the next questions, please refer to the periodic table of the elements. Write your
answers for each question in Table 1.

Scientists agreed to give symbols for each element. This is very helpful especially to those
elements with long names. Instead of writing the full names, a one-letter or two-letter
symbol may be used. You can find these symbols in the periodic table too. It is written
inside the same box for that element. For instance, O is the symbol for oxygen.

Q1. What are the symbols for elements with long names such as beryllium, phosphorus,
germanium, and darmstatdtium?

Table 1. Name and symbol of some elements and the group number it belongs to.
Name Symbol Group Number

Notice that most of the one-letter symbols are the first letters of these elements.

Q2. What are the symbols for boron, nitrogen, fluorine and vanadium?

For the two-letter symbols, most of them start with the first letter of the element.
Notice that the second letter in the symbol may be any letter found in the element’s
name. Notice as well that only the first letter is capitalized for the two-letter symbols.
Q3. What are the symbols for lithium, chlorine, argon, calcium and manganese?

There are symbols that use letters that were taken from the ancient name of the
element. Examples of ancient names are ferrum (iron), argentum (silver),
hydrargyrum (mercury) and plumbum (lead).

Q4. What are the symbols for iron, silver, mercury, and lead?

In the earlier grade levels, you already encountered elements. You studied rocks and
learned that some are composed of silicon and magnesium. Some even have gold.

Q5. What are the symbols for silicon, magnesium and gold?

When you were recycling materials, you segregated the objects according to what
these are made of. Some of them are made from aluminum, copper, tin or carbon.

Q6. What are the symbols for these 4 elements?

In nutrition, you were advised to eat enough bananas because it is a good source of
potassium.

Q7. What is the symbol for potassium?

In each box, you will find a number on top of each symbol. This is the atomic number.
In the higher grade levels, you will learn what this number represents. For now, use
it as a guide on how the elements are sequenced.

Q8. What is the element’s name and symbol that comes before titanium?
How about that comes after barium?

Elements that are in the same column have similar properties. For this, each column
is called a family and has a family name. However, at this point, you will refer first
to each family with their corresponding group number. Notice that the columns are
numbered 1 to 18 from left to right.

Q9. In which group does each of the elements listed in Table 1 belongs to?