A period 5 element is one of the chemical elements in the fifth row (or period) of the periodic table of the chemical elements. The periodic table is laid out in rows to illustrate recurring (periodic) trends in the chemical behaviour of the elements as their atomic number increases: a new row is begun when chemical behaviour begins to repeat, meaning that elements with similar behaviour fall into the same vertical columns. The fifth period contains 18 elements, beginning with rubidium and ending with xenon. As a rule, period 5 elements fill their 5s shells first, then their 4d, and 5p shells, in that order; however, there are exceptions, such as rhodium. This period contains technetium, one of the two elements until lead that has no stable isotopes (along with promethium), as well as molybdenum and iodine, two of the heaviest elements with a known biological role, and Niobium has the largest magnetic known penetration depth of all the elements. Zirconium is one of the main components of zircon crystals, currently the oldest known minerals in the earth's crust. Many later transition metals, such as rhodium, are very commonly used in jewelry due to the fact that they are incredibly shiny. This period is known to have a large number of exceptions to the Madelung rule. {| class="wikitable sortable" ! colspan="3" | Chemical element ! Block
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(*) Exception to the Madelung rule |
Rubidium |
Rubidium is the first element placed in period 5. |
Jean-Yves Le Boudec, Seyed Mohammadhossein Tabatabaee
David Lyndon Emsley, Dominik Józef Kubicki, Daniel Prochowicz, Amita Ummadisingu, Albert Hofstetter