# Periodic Table elements **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [December 14, 2014, 4:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/periodic-table-elements/707183 "2014-12-14T04:00:09Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [December 15, 2014, 2:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/periodic-table-elements/707183/21 "2014-12-15T02:50:57Z")
> [@jtur88](#): > > Although the number of protons is an integer,and therefore there can be only 92 without the transuranic ones, that by itself does not guarantee that the electron configuration is the same in all conditions. So, while an element with 17 protons would still be chlorine, it might have a different arrangement of electrons, and that valence would give it very different properties, such that we would not recognize it as chlorine. It would be chlorine in name only, but a “different element” in any real-world sense, maybe even a metallic one… To explain why this is completely wrong, atoms lose and gain electrons all the time. We call atoms that have lost or gained extra electrons “ions”, and it is such a well known feature of ordinary everyday chemistry that it’s hard to understand what the confusion is. Chlorine with an extra electron is just a Cl- ion, sodium that has lost an electron is just an Na+ ion, found in everyday saltwater. Ionization is an extremely well understood physical process. Atoms can vary in three ways. The number of protons, the number of neutrons, and the number of electrons. We define an element by the number of protons it has. If it has one proton, we name it hydrogen no matter what the configuration of neutrons or electrons is. If it has two, we name it helium. If it has three we name it lithium. And so on. We could have named all elements by number, but the discovery of atomic number happened a long time after the elements were discovered, so they already had names. The number of neutrons an atom has determines its isotope. Some elements have only one isotope, but most have two or three or more. Some isotopes are stable–they don’t decay over billions of years. Others are unstable, the particular arrangement of neutrons and protons spontaneously breaks apart, forming new atoms. There are some elements that have no known stable isotopes, and this means that any atoms of that element that were created in the early universe, or via stellar fusion, or in supernovas, or rom other atomic decay, will decay into other forms very quickly. And as I said above, atoms gain and lose electrons extremely easily, this just makes a positively or negatively charged atom called an ion. ---
**Author:** ![bizzwire](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/958977/32.png) [@bizzwire](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bizzwire)\ **Post date:** [December 15, 2014, 11:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/periodic-table-elements/707183/22 "2014-12-15T23:32:16Z")
> [@zoid](#): > > I never said otherwise. > > Colibri pointed out that an element can have varying numbers of electrons and I simply added that this is also true of neutrons. > > For the life of me I have no idea what you could be reading into what I posted that suggests anything else. Sorry: the OP was asking about different elements. True, you can add or remove electrons and neutrons, but you still have the same element, not a different one. I suspect that we are talking at cross-purposes. No offense meant. ---
**Author:** ![zoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/zoid/32/336_2.png) [@zoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zoid)\ **Post date:** [December 15, 2014, 11:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/periodic-table-elements/707183/23 "2014-12-15T23:43:34Z")
> [@bizzwire](#): > > Sorry: the OP was asking about different elements. True, you can add or remove electrons and neutrons, but you still have the same element, not a different one. I suspect that we are talking at cross-purposes. No offense meant. Yeah I figured it was just a minor misunderstanding - we’re cool 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Darth\_Panda](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ee7513/32.png) [@Darth\_Panda](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darth_Panda)\ **Post date:** [December 16, 2014, 12:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/periodic-table-elements/707183/24 "2014-12-16T00:44:11Z")
Any chance of elements with antiprotons? Full disclosure: I have no idea what I’m talking about. ---
**Author:** ![robert\_columbia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e79b87/32.png) [@robert\_columbia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robert_columbia)\ **Post date:** [December 16, 2014, 1:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/periodic-table-elements/707183/25 "2014-12-16T01:07:39Z")
> [@Derleth](#): > > …no element with more protons than [bismuth (or lead, if you’re persnickety)](http://www.fourmilab.ch/documents/barely_radioactive/) is known to be non-radioactive… I knew I shouldn’t have taken so much Pepto-Bismol. Thanks for warning me. ---
**Author:** ![dtilque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d6d6ee/32.png) [@dtilque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dtilque)\ **Post date:** [December 16, 2014, 3:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/periodic-table-elements/707183/26 "2014-12-16T03:23:46Z")
> [@Darth\_Panda](#): > > Any chance of elements with antiprotons? > > Full disclosure: I have no idea what I’m talking about. Not in our part of the universe. Most likely not in any part of it. But if there were, it’d just be anti forms of familiar elements. ---
**Author:** ![Derleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)\ **Post date:** [December 16, 2014, 12:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/periodic-table-elements/707183/27 "2014-12-16T12:22:34Z")
> [@Darth\_Panda](#): > > Any chance of elements with antiprotons? > > Full disclosure: I have no idea what I’m talking about. To use antiprotons like that, you’d need antineutrons and positrons (antielectrons). If you tried to mix particles and antiparticles in the same atom, you’d get mutual annihilation, a blast of gamma radiation, and probably some other kinds of particles which may or may not be stable. In theory, yes, there could very well be antiatoms made up entirely of antiparticles. However, they likely don’t exist very close to us, because space isn’t a perfect vacuum, all the hydrogen near us is normal matter, and we don’t see the gamma radiation glow we’d expect to see if a chunk of antimatter made its way close to our part of the Universe, annihilating normal matter hydrogen as it went. However, there’s nothing saying very distant stars aren’t fusing antimatter. The light would look the same to us, because the antiphoton is just the photon; it is its own antiparticle. ---
**Author:** ![Smeghead](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f1d935/32.png) [@Smeghead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smeghead)\ **Post date:** [December 16, 2014, 9:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/periodic-table-elements/707183/28 "2014-12-16T21:21:56Z")
To bring it back to the OP, though, if an alien race attempted to introduce some of this antimatter to “our science”, you’d get nothing more than a big boom and lots of death. ---
**Author:** ![md2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/73ab20/32.png) [@md2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md2000)\ **Post date:** [December 16, 2014, 10:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/periodic-table-elements/707183/29 "2014-12-16T22:45:03Z")
> [@jtur88](#): > > Although the number of protons is an integer,and therefore there can be only 92 without the transuranic ones, that by itself does not guarantee that the electron configuration is the same in all conditions. So, while an element with 17 protons would still be chlorine, it might have a different arrangement of electrons, and that valence would give it very different properties, such that we would not recognize it as chlorine. It would be chlorine in name only, but a “different element” in any real-world sense, maybe even a metallic one… This is the issue - the number of protons determines the number of electrons, because they balance - plus for minus. As mentioned above, if there is an imbalance, the atom becomes an ion and can therefore react with other ion(s) to “share” electron(s), thus forming molecules. Electrons arrange themselves in pairs with matching opposite “spin”. It’s been a long time since I studied this stuff but basically, there are a series of “orbits” around the nucleus. (Simpler to think of orbits as “probability clouds” rather than moons circling a planet). Electrons tend to fill the lower orbits first, and work their way up. Therefore, the orbits are quasi-geometrical “holes” or levels to be filled - 2, 6, 10, 14, etc. creating levels of 2,8,18, etc. (See [Electron configuration - Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electron_configuration) but a bit complex) An element is more likely to lose electrons if the orbit level being filled is close to empty - H(1), Li(3), Na(11) etc. - reactive metals. More likely to attract an electron if the orbit level is almost full, to “fill” the orbit. (Halogens - Fluorine, Chlorine, etc.) Elements that like to lose electrons react easily with ones that like to attract electrons, binding into molecules. The “orbits” are probability clouds; their geometric arrangement allows for minimal probability of electrons being close to each other - which accounts for the shapes of molecules, a bond between atoms will take on specific shapes generally. Water molecules will always be roughly boomerang-shaped, for example. So you don’t get “weird” atoms or molecule properties that way. Remember that electrons fall into these orbits because they are attracted to protons - positive to negative; but repelled by other electrons, so they don’t all fall into the lowest orbit. As mentioned above, the atom can lose electrons, become an ion, but then it wants to react with other atoms to form molecules. Also, the level at which the electron is “orbiting” is indicative of its energy. (Einstein’s first Nobel prize was over the photoelectric effect, demonstrating that a sufficiently energetic photon could knock an electron away from an atom - and the energy of the photons demonstrated quantum properties.) An electron can absorb the energy of a photon, and jump to a “higher orbit” further away than the lowest orbit if not all the way off the atom. But then, it wants to drop back down and emit a photon. That energy emitted is a specific measure of the energy difference between higher and lower orbits - the frequency/colour determined by the element and the intensity of the light determined by the odds that this happens in a sample of the “excited” element. Light shone through a sample will be absorbed (black lines) as it “knocks up” electrons, and then light lines against the dark as it emits that stored energy. (Lasers are typically pure pulses of an element’s characteristic frequencies.) So it’s not physics-possible for the electrons to form “new configurations” for a given nucleus configuration. The shape of the orbitals are determined, the lowest energy configuration is predetermined, we see plenty of examples here and now of elements in various conditions where the electrons have hopped to higher orbits, they don’t act much different and they will settle to a lower energy level without constant energy feed. The “new element” crap from science fiction comes from the days immediately after WWII when scientists were creating trans-uranic elements not seen in nature - mainly due to short half-lives. It was stupid at the time, and it’s even stupider now when any script writer who paid attention in high schools should know better. When the movie _Avatar_ discusses “unobtainium” I sense an attempt to be ironic and funny, which may or may not work. ---
**Author:** ![md2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/73ab20/32.png) [@md2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md2000)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2014, 6:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/periodic-table-elements/707183/30 "2014-12-17T06:16:39Z")
Forgot to mention “unless the fundamental laws of physics are different in different areas of the universe…” Basic observation seems to imply that what we see even in the remotest regions is consistent with our current view of the laws of physics; and there’s no mainstream theories I’m aware of that say differently. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/periodic-table-elements/707183.md?page=1)