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Alternative periodic tables

The periodic law may be represented in multiple ways, of which the standard periodic table is only one. Within 100 years of the appearance of Mendeleev's table in 1869, Edward G. Mazurs had collected an estimated 700 different published versions of the periodic table. Many forms retain the rectangular structure, including Charles Janet 's left-step periodic table (pictured below), and the modernised form of Mendeleev's original 8-column layout that is still common in Russia. Other periodic table formats have been shaped much more exotically, such as spirals (Otto Theodor Benfey 's pictured to the right), circles and triangles.

Alternative periodic tables are often developed to highlight or emphasize chemical or physical properties of the elements that are not as apparent in traditional periodic tables, with different ones skewed more towards emphasizing chemistry or physics at either end. The standard form, which remains by far the most common, is somewhere in the middle.

The many different forms of the periodic table have prompted the questions of whether there is an optimal or definitive form of the periodic table, and if so, what it might be. There are no current consensus answers to either question. Janet's left-step table is being increasingly discussed as a candidate for being the optimal or most fundamental form; Scerri has written in support of it, as it clarifies helium's nature as an s-block element, increases regularity by having all period lengths repeated, faithfully follows Madelung's rule by making each period correspond to one value of n + ℓ, and regularises atomic number triads and the first-row anomaly trend. While he notes that its placement of helium atop the alkaline earth metals can be seen a disadvantage from a chemical perspective, he counters this by appealing to the first-row anomaly, pointing out that the periodic table "fundamentally reduces to quantum mechanics", and that it is concerned with "abstract elements" and hence atomic properties rather than macroscopic properties.