Atomic number consistent with the modern practice of ordering the elements by proton number, "Z", but that number was not known or suspected at the time. A simple numbering based on periodic table position was never entirely satisfactory, however. Besides the case of iodine and tellurium, later several other pairs of elements (such as argon and potassium, cobalt and nickel) were known to have nearly identical or reversed atomic weights, thus requiring their placement in the periodic table to be determined by their chemical properties. However the gradual identification of more and more chemically similar lanthanide elements, whose atomic number was not
Atomic radius they provided important evidence for the development and confirmation of quantum theory. The atomic radii decrease across the Periodic Table because as the atomic number increases, the number of protons increases across the period, but the extra electrons are only added to the same quantum shell. Therefore, the effective nuclear charge towards the outermost electrons increases, drawing the outermost electrons closer. As a result, the electron cloud contracts and the atomic radius decreases. In 1920, shortly after it had become possible to determine the sizes of atoms using X-ray crystallography, it was suggested that all atoms of the same element