Searching for chemical elements: a multidisciplinary activity in the 150th anniversary of the Periodic Table of Chemical Elements

Abstract

[Excerpt] 2019 is the 150th anniversary of the Periodic Table of Chemical Elements and has therefore been proclaimed the "International Year of the Periodic Table of Chemical Elements (IYPT2019)" by the United Nations General Assembly and UNESCO [1]. A working tool very useful to various professionals and in diverse scientific areas, this table would not exist if someone had not distributed and ordered the chemical elements according to the value of their atomic weights. The father of the Periodic Table, the Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleev (1834-1907), was so visionary that his Table allows housing not only the known chemical elements at that time but also the ones still unknown that came to be discovered or synthesized. When we come across this Table, with so many chemical elements, we ask ourselves how we use them and where we can find each of them, in our real world!