Foreword 6

Elemental

building blocks 8

Chemical discoveries 10

Inside an atom 12

Periodic table

of elements 14

Reactions and uses 16

DK India

Senior Editor Bharti Bedi

Project Art Editor Amit Verma

Editorial Team Neha Ruth Samuel,

Charvi Arora, Deeksha Saikia

Art Editors Mansi Agrawal, Amisha Gupta, Ravi Indiver

Assistant Art Editors Neetika Malik Jhingan, Nidhi Rastogi

Jacket Designer Suhita Dharamjit

Jackets Editorial Coordinator Priyanka Sharma

Senior DTP Designer Harish Aggarwal

DTP Designers Sachin Gupta, Syed Md Farhan,

Nityanand Kumar, Mohammad Rizwan

Picture Researcher Nishwan Rasool

Managing Jackets Editors Saloni Singh, Sreshtha Bhattacharya

Picture Research Manager Taiyaba Khatoon

Pre-production Manager Balwant Singh

Production Manager Pankaj Sharma

Managing Editor Kingshuk Ghoshal

Managing Art Editor Govind Mittal

DK UK

Project Editor Ashwin Khurana

Senior Art Editor Smiljka Surla

Jacket Editor Claire Gell

Senior Jacket Designer Mark Cavanagh

Jacket Design Development Manager Sophia MTT

Managing Editor Dr Lisa Gillespie

Managing Art Editor Owen Peyton Jones

Producers, Pre-production Dragana Puvacic, Catherine Williams

Producer Anna Vallarino

Publisher Andrew Macintyre

Art Director Karen Self

Associate Publishing Director Liz Wheeler

Design Director Phil Ormerod

Publishing Director Jonathan Metcalf

Photographer Ruth Jenkinson

Photography Assistant Julie Stewart

Element samples prepared and supplied by RGB Research Ltd

http://www.periodictable.co.uk

First published in Great Britain in 2017 by

Dorling Kindersley Limited

80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL

Copyright © 2017 Dorling Kindersley Limited

A Penguin Random House Company

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

001–289022–April/

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,

stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any

means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise,

without the prior written permission of the copyright owner.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is

available from the British Library

ISBN: 978-0-2412-4043-

Printed in China

A WORLD OF IDEAS:

SEE ALL THERE IS TO KNOW

http://www.dk.com

CONTENTS

Lithium 24

Sodium 26

Salt flats 28

Potassium 30

Rubidium 32

Caesium, Francium 34

Hydrogen 20

Beryllium 38

Magnesium 40

Calcium 42

Fly Geyser 44

Strontium 46

Barium 48

Radium 50

Alkaline Earth Metals 36

Alkali Metals 22

Hydrogen 18

004-005_Contents.indd 4 02/12/16 9:25 pm