Answer: Mendeleev’s table of elements was better accepted than those of other scientists at the time because it predicted correctly the properties of elements that had not yet been discovered. Moseley went a step further in suggesting that the elements be arranged according to atomic number.
Explanation:
- Mendeleev arranged the elements in order of increasing its atomic mass and then placed the elements with similar properties below each other.
- In his table, He grouped the elements according to their properties. So, this corrected some wrong atomic masses.
Also, He left some blank spaces in the table.
- Mendeleev assumed that the blank spaces represented elements that had not yet been discovered and predicted the chemical and physical properties of five of the missing elements.
- Then, 3 of these elements were discovered in the next 15 years, and their properties closely matched Mendeleev's predictions. So, chemists approved Mendeleev's Periodic Table.
- Physicist Henry Moseley studied the x-ray spectrum of 12 elements, 10 of which occupied series places in the periodic table.
- Moseley proofed that “there is in the atom a fundamental quantity, which increases by regular steps as we pass from one element to the next.” And this quantity referred to as atomic number in 1920 by Ernest Rutherford.
