Group (periodic table)

Editor-In-Chief: C. Michael Gibson, M.S., M.D. [1]

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.

There is considerable confusion surrounding the two old systems in use (old IUPAC and CAS) that combined the use of Roman numerals with letters. In the old IUPAC system the letters A and B were designated to the left (A) and right (B) part of the table, while in the CAS system the letters A and B were designated to main group elements (A) and transition elements (B). The former system was frequently used in Europe while the latter was most common in America. The new IUPAC scheme was developed to replace both systems as they confusingly used the same names to mean different things.

The periodic table groups are as follows (in the brackets are shown the old systems: European and American):