As science advances, its laws become fewer but of greater scope. In this respect the Periodic Law, which is the basis of the Periodic Table,
represents a major step in the progress of chemistry — it affords the natural classification of the elements. The Periodic Table was developed by
chemists more than one hundred years ago as a correlation for the properties of the elements. With the discovery of the internal structure of the
atom, it became recognized by physicists as a natural law. When the crystalline structure of solids was studied, the nature of the chemical bonds
was understood, and the theory of metals was put forward, it became an essential tool not only for chemists and physicists, but for metallurgists as
well. Of the 87 naturally occurring elements, 63, i.e., about three fourth are described as metals, 16 as nonmetals, and 9 as metalloids. Chemists
should abandon numbering the groups in the Periodic Table and to give descriptive names instead
Key words: metals, non-metals, metalloids, typical metals, less-typical metals, transition metals, inner transition metals, lanthanides, actinides.
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