We already knew about lots of elements when the periodic table was first written down, like sodium and oxygen. However, by thinking about the elements in this very organised way, chemists were able to predict the existence of new elements by looking at gaps in their tables and guessing that there should be something in there to fill the gap. I had a look to see what sort of elements they predicted – one of these elements was gallium, which is used to make lots of metal alloys that are important for electronics.
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