Block (periodic table) form compounds. The first period elements in this block, however, are nonmetals. Hydrogen is highly chemically reactive, like the other s-block elements, but helium is a virtually unreactive noble gas. S-block elements are unified by the fact that their valence electrons (outermost electrons) are in the s orbital. The s-orbital is a single spherical cloud which can contain only one pair of electrons; hence, the s-block consists of only two columns in the periodic table. Elements in column 1, with a single s-orbital valence electron, are the most reactive of the block. Elements in the second column have two s-orbital
History of the periodic table in an obscure Russian journal and then republished in a German journal, "Zeitschrift für Chemie". In it, Mendeleev stated that: Scientific benefits of Mendeleev's table Unknown to Mendeleev, a German chemist, Lothar Meyer, was also working on a periodic table. Although his work was published in 1864, and was done independently of Mendeleev, few historians regard him as an equal co-creator of the periodic table. Meyer's table only included twenty-eight elements, which were not classified by atomic weight, but by valence, and he never reached the idea of predicting new elements and correcting atomic weights. A few months after Mendeleev