Re: Peroidic Table (was exclusion principle which was electrons)

["John S. Denker" <jsd@AV8N.COM>]

On 11/14/2003 11:40 AM, J. Green wrote:
> The periodic table is made of rows and columns.  They both indicate
> electron shell configurations.

OK, now we're talking about shells.  That's progress.

This leaves us with the questions, why are there shells
at all, and why should we care?

The observed ground-state electron configuration of the
first five elements are
  1s1, 1s2, 1s2 2s1, 1s2 2s2, 1s2 2s2 2p1.

In the absence of exclusion, the configurations would be:
  1s1, 1s2, 1s3, 1s4, 1s5.

and each atom would be as reactive as monatomic hydrogen,
i.e. very, very reactive.  In particular helium would not
behave even remotely like a noble gas.

This is the unequivocal prediction of physics.  Plain old
physics.  Nothing fancy.

These predictions are borne out by many different lines
of evidence.  I know of a dozen or so, and I've exhibited
a couple and hinted at others.

Anybody who wants to contradict these predictions and/or
observations has a treeeeemendous burden of proof.