Chemical element native solid elements occur in alloys, such as that of iron and nickel. The history of the discovery and use of the elements began with primitive human societies that found native elements like carbon, sulfur, copper and gold. Later civilizations extracted elemental copper, tin, lead and iron from their ores by smelting, using charcoal. Alchemists and chemists subsequently identified many more; all of the naturally occurring elements were known by 1950. The properties of the chemical elements are summarized in the periodic table, which organizes the elements by increasing atomic number into rows ("periods") in which the columns ("groups") share
Periodic table (detailed cells) Periodic table (detailed cells) The periodic table is a tabular method of displaying the chemical elements. It can show much information, after name, symbol and atomic number. Also, for each element mean atomic mass value for the natural isotopic composition of each element can be noted. The two layout forms originate from two graphic forms of presentation of the same periodic table. Historically, when the f-block was identified it was drawn below the existing table, with markings for its in-table location (this page uses dots or asterisks). Also, a common presentation is to put all 15 lanthanide and actinide columns