Questions and Answers

What would you get if you combined one atom each from all the elements in the periodic table?

It wouldn't make anything really. If we combine one of each of the atoms from the periodic table, the result would be so small that we wouldn't notice it, even with the best electron microscopes. You see, some elements are very reactive and react immediately with whatever is next to it. Oxygen is a good example of that. Oxygen is extremely reactive, especially when it is in a rare single atom mode called atomic oxygen (oxygen at our level of the earth has two or three atoms). Non-reactive elements like helium, neon, argon, krypton, xenon and radon ignore all other elements and remain unchanged. So, if you were to combine one atom of each of the elements from the periodic table it would leave only a TINY group of compounds and the rest would still be sitting around as elements. Something interesting may happen on a very small scale by combining these atoms, but this depends on the orderthat the atoms are placed together.

Author:

Brian Kross, Chief Detector Engineer (Other answers by Brian Kross)

Related Pages:

The Periodic Table of Elements