Elements+

Discover the beauty of atoms for the first time.

Have you ever wondered what an atom actually looks like up close? Elements is a periodic table experience centered around visualizing what an atom and its electron orbitals look like. From the simple elegance of hydrogen (90% of the atoms in the known universe are hydrogen) to the beautiful complexity of tungsten, every element is unique and visually exciting.

Learn more about each element’s atom by reading meaningful information about the element itself and the chemical group it belongs to. Scale and rotate the atom to get a closer look at the internals and the beautiful shapes made by the s, p, d and f orbitals inside. Explore the elements at your own pace, examining them physically and intuiting patterns across the table (hint: atom size tends to increase from left to right, and from top to bottom).

In the periodic table view, press and hold to magnify the element tile. Tap on an element tile to go into element view, where you can read in depth about the element and interact with its atom. Don’t forgot to scroll the panel on the right side to find more information about it. You can learn more about each chemical group using the key button in periodic table view.

In 1926, physicist Erwin Schrödinger revolutionized the field of quantum mechanics with his paper on quantum wave mechanics, which describe the probability distribution of electrons around a nucleus. Bohr’s model of the atom previously depicted electrons as having fixed paths, similar to the planetary orbits around the sun — moving outward when excited and falling backwards when losing energy. Schrödinger’s equations showed that electron orbitals are volume shapes where electrons probably appear most of the time, rather than being at a fixed distance from the nucleus.