Groups and families of the periodic table
The table's columns and blocks, one page each: what the members share, how they change down the group, where you meet them and which ones break the pattern.
Alkali metals
Group 1: lithium to francium. Soft, silvery metals so eager to react that they fizz, flare and sometimes explode in plain water.
Alkaline earth metals
Group 2: beryllium to radium. The metals behind bones, chalk, fireworks and the brilliant white flare of burning magnesium.
Transition metals
Groups 3 to 12: the d block. Iron, copper, gold and their relatives: the hard, colourful, useful metals that fill the middle of the table.
Post-transition metals
Aluminium, tin, lead and their neighbours in the p block. Softer, lower-melting metals that sit between the transition metals and the metalloids, from drinks cans to solder.
Metalloids
Boron, silicon, germanium, arsenic, antimony, tellurium and astatine. The in-between elements that look like metals, behave like non-metals and power every computer chip.
Non-metals
Hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, sulfur and selenium. The elements of air and life: few in number, but they make up almost all of you.
Halogens
Group 17: fluorine to tennessine. The salt-makers: a gas, a gas, a liquid and a solid, all one electron short of a full shell.
Noble gases
Group 18: helium to oganesson. Colourless, odourless and almost impossible to provoke, the elements that would rather be left alone.
Lanthanides
Lanthanum to lutetium: the first row of the f block. Fifteen near-identical metals hidden below the main table, and the secret ingredient in magnets and screens.
Actinides
Actinium to lawrencium: the second row of the f block. Fifteen radioactive heavyweights, from the uranium in reactors to elements that exist for minutes at a time.
Superheavy elements
Rutherfordium to oganesson: elements 104 to 118. Made a few atoms at a time and gone in a flash: the elements at the very edge of the periodic table.