chemical series

A group, also known as a family, is a vertical column in the periodic table of the chemical elements. There are 18 groups in the standard periodic table.The modern explanation of the pattern of the periodic table is that the elements in a group have similar configurations of the outermost electron shells of their atoms: as most chemical properties are dominated by the orbital location of the outermost electron. There are three ways of numbering the groups of the periodic table, one using Hindu-Arabic numerals and the other two using Roman numerals. The Roman numeral names are the original traditional names of the groups; the Arabic numeral names are those recommended by the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) to replace the old names in an attempt to reduce the confusion generated by the two older, but mutually confusing, schemes.
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