Q. What is the basis of a periodic table?

        Details of answer;
      The periodic table is one of the most powerful icons in science; a single document that captures the essence of chemistry in an elegant pattern.
      The periodic table is an arrangement of information the chemical elements. Bits of our knowledge about the 100+ elements that make up all of earth, space, us, and every thing, are in data boxes, sequenced on the chart in order of the number of protons in their nuclei - their atomic number - in such a way that the properties of the elements which reoccur on a predictable basis are made clear by the repeated proximity of similar properties.
      These groupings, called periods, display the element data boxes side by side, while the periodic properties are depicted above or below the direction of the text in the box. There is no one single or best structure for the periodic table but by whatever form that is in agreement with the Periodic Law, it is a masterpiece of organised chemical information. Recognition of the role and makeup of these natural elements is one of the greatest achievements of human intellectual curiosity.
      Combinations of 26 letters make up every word in the English language. Similarly, all material things that we know of in all of space and time are composed of 92 atoms or different combinations of these elements. An element is a substance that cannot be broken down into simpler substances through ordinary chemistry--it is not destroyed by acids, for example, nor changed by electricity, light, or heat.
      Although philosophers in the ancient world had a rudimentary concept of elements, they were incorrect in identifying water, for example, as one. Today it is common knowledge that water is a compound, whose smallest unit is a molecule. Passing electricity through a molecule of water can separate it into two atoms of hydrogen and one atom of oxygen, each a separate element.
      The ancient concept of elements jibed with today’s in noting that elements had characteristic properties. Just as people not only look different from each other but also interact differently with others, so elements have both physical and chemical properties. Some elements form shiny solids, for example, that react readily and sometimes violently with oxygen and water. Atoms of some elements form gases that scarcely interact with other elements.
    When Dmitri Mendeleev, a Siberian professor of general chemistry was unable to find an appropriate textbook, he began writing his own. That textbook, written between 1868 and 1870, would provide a framework for modern chemical and physical theory.
      Scientists had identified over 60 elements by Mendeleev’s time, and elements were considered the most basic particle of matter. The building blocks of atoms (electrons, protons, and neutrons) were discovered only later. om of hydrogen, the lightest element.
      Using the recently improved element weights of Cannizzaro, the first to publish an arrangement of the chemical elements in order of atomic weights was Alexandre-Emile Béguyer de Chancourtois, but Mendeleev went out on a limb, estimating - correctly - the makeup of several missing elements, earning high praise and is usually thought of as the inventor of the periodic table.

        Resources;
Royal Society of Chemistry, World of Elements, Elements of the World; Quadbeck-Seeger, the Periodic Table; Scerri, chemeducator.org, aip.org, corrosion-doctors.org