All 19 Periodic Table flashcards. Free.
The whole deck, not a sample — Periodic Table is 19 cards, which is no longer than the 30 we give away on every deck, so there is nothing left to charge for. 11 pages, US Letter, black and white. Grades 9–12.
No account, no email, no card details.
11 pages, and the backs are already right
Every front sheet is followed by its own back sheet with the rows reversed. Print double-sided, flip on the long edge, and answer number 7 is behind question number 7. Print a deck you built yourself, flip on the short edge, and every answer lands on the wrong card — which nobody finds out until sixty cards have been cut apart.
- 19 cards — counted out of the file, not rounded up
- Eight cards a sheet, with cut guides
- US Letter PDF, black and white, photocopier-friendly
- Print a set per student, every class, every year
19 cards. The table has 18 groups and a short, closed list of IUPAC-approved collective names, and this deck covers the named ones once each. Padding past that would mean inventing families no standards body recognises.
Every card here is cited to two independent sources
Two different organisations — not a standards body and a website reprinting it — and a script refuses the card if the two disagree, so the check runs on every card rather than on the ones somebody remembered to look at. A second specialist then re-verified this deck from sources of their own, without reading our citations first. A further 5,420 cards across 30 other decks were read end to end by a subject specialist instead, and we say which is which on every deck rather than averaging the two into one flattering word.
What 19 printed cards do that a screen does not
A phone deck is one card at a time. A printed deck is a pile you can split: the ones you know, the ones you nearly know, and the ones you keep missing. That third pile is the entire study session, and it is the thing a scrolling app hides from you.
- Print once, use all year. The licence covers a set per student, every class, every year.
- No device, no login, no data. Works in a cover lesson, on a bus, or at a kitchen table. Grades 9–12, filed under science.
- Change what you disagree with. Every card loads into the free maker on this site. Reword it, drop it, add your own, reprint.
Here are all 19 cards
Check them against your own textbook before you spend anything.
- Group 1 — the alkali metals
- Li, Na, K, Rb, Cs, Fr — one valence electron; react with water to form a strong alkali. Hydrogen is not one
- Group 2 — the alkaline earth metals
- Be, Mg, Ca, Sr, Ba, Ra — two valence electrons, so they form 2+ ions
- Group 13 — the boron group
- B, Al, Ga, In, Tl — three valence electrons; B is a metalloid, Al to Tl are metals
- Group 14 — the carbon group
- C, Si, Ge, Sn, Pb — four valence electrons; runs nonmetal to metalloid to metal
- Group 15 — the pnictogens
- N, P, As, Sb, Bi — five valence electrons; their compounds are called pnictides
- Group 16 — the chalcogens
- O, S, Se, Te, Po — six valence electrons; their compounds are called chalcogenides
- Group 17 — the halogens
- F, Cl, Br, I, At — seven valence electrons, one short of a full shell, so highly reactive
- Group 18 — the noble gases
- He, Ne, Ar, Kr, Xe, Rn — a filled valence shell, so almost unreactive
- Groups 3–12 — the transition metals
- The d-block — d subshells fill across each row. Also the transition elements, though IUPAC may exclude group 12
- Are Zn, Cd and Hg transition metals?
- Group 12 is d-block, but many sources leave it out — IUPAC records that it is 'not always included'
- The lanthanoids
- La to Lu, elements 57–71 — the 4f series. IUPAC prefers 'lanthanoid' to 'lanthanide'
- The actinoids
- Ac to Lr, elements 89–103 — the 5f series; every one is radioactive
- The rare earth metals
- Sc, Y and the 15 lanthanoids — 17 elements. Neither rare nor earths
- Group 3 — the unsettled group
- Sc and Y, then either La and Ac or Lu and Lr. IUPAC's task group found no objective way to decide
- The f-block
- The lanthanoids and actinoids — f subshells fill. Also called the inner transition elements
- Main group elements
- Groups 1, 2 and 13–18, hydrogen excepted — IUPAC's name for the s- and p-block columns
- A period
- A row of the table. There are seven, and the number is the outermost occupied shell — except palladium's, which is 4
- Hydrogen's place
- Group 1, at the head of the column — but not an alkali metal: a nonmetal that resembles both group 1 and group 17
- How the columns are numbered
- IUPAC numbers them 1–18, left to right. Older CAS (IA/IIIB) and European (IA/IIIA) labels persist
Questions
- How do I print them double-sided?
- Double-sided, flip on the long edge. Every front sheet is followed by its own already-mirrored back sheet, so print them in the order they come and every answer lands on its own card.
- Can I edit the cards?
- Yes, and that is half the point. Once you own the deck, the "Buy & edit" button here opens all 19 cards in the free flash card maker on this site — reword a definition, delete the ones you do not teach, add your own, and print at anything from two to nine cards a page, rather than the fixed eight of the PDF.
- Can I print a set for every student?
- Yes. Personal and classroom licence: unlimited printing, every class you teach, every year you teach it. It does not cover reselling the file or passing it on to a colleague.
- What if I find a card that is wrong?
- Tell us and we fix it, and we publish what changed. We have withdrawn a whole deck from sale for being out of date rather than quietly patch it.
- Do I need an account?
- No. The file downloads straight away — no account, no email, no card details.