Talk:List of elements by atomic number

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[edit] Proposed Revision of Discovered Column

While browsing through this column, there were many names that conradicted to with who I regard the "discoverer". I know that this term is very ambiguous. I wanted to make the list more complete. As of now this column only has one source- History of the Origin of the Chemical Elements and their Discoverers. I am not sure as to the exact format of the list, but I wanted to somehow distinguish between the different discovers. For example, one could call the discoverer of an element the one who first recognizes the element in a compound or one who first sees its spectral line or one who first isolate it. In some cases, one man actually isolated the element first but because of publicity reasons the slightly later one is more regarded. In others, a person may successfully isolate the element but not recognize it as something new. I personally consider (and so do many pieces of literature) consider Davy magnesium's rightful discoverer because he was the first to isolate the metal. However, Black did recogne its existence in magnesium oxide through his work on latent heats. There are several other elements as to which the case is analgous although I cannot remember them off the top of my head. I am completely fine with the prehistoric ones and I will not alter any of the transuranium ones (synthetically created). I have at least 5 books on the subject of elements and will review them in an effort to make this column more complete. I just want to explain myself before I endeavor to do so. I will add many sources to this list as well. Is this ok?

As I said, I am not sure exactly how I am going to format the entire thing. I might use asterisks/different colors to denote the difference and in cases where it is really an argument over who the owner will be I might have a link to a separate page explaining the story. This is a rather large project so it may take me a while if I receieve permission to begin. If it gets good, I will probably make an entire new page for it and delete the column on this page entirely. Agreed?

Chris Barile 20:29, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

I'd suggest putting this information in a different list. Perhaps List of elements by year of discovery. Then include columns like year of discovery and year of isolation, as well as the people responsible for both. As for this table, I think I am going to remove the discovery information and the physical properties, because it really isn't necessary and makes all of these pages harder to maintain (having repeated information isn't very efficient). --Spangineer^es (háblame) 02:37, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

Sounds good. I'll get to work on it and post a prototype here once I'm close (may take a while). Chris Barile 07:12, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

See also recent talk on this list at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Elements. Note that there already is a Discoveries of the chemical elements page. You could make yourself the most useful by checking and adding specific, reliable references for the histories in the individual element articles. They should be the primary resource for historical information, from there, other lists may borrow. Femto 11:51, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] numbers?

Why is this the list of elements by number when you can order them by any collumn? --Gbleem 11:31, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

Because this is the list by number, there are others for the other columns.--Scorpion451 16:28, 5 July 2007 (UTC)