Can you just combine any elements in the periodic table and make any combos of them?
You cannot just put any old element next to another and get a compound. Elements combine under certain circumstances… an example would be carbon, if you put it next to one other element it may not combine… carbon had four “spots” for bonding with other elements, it may be bonded with single bonds to four other elements (such as hydrogen – which makes up the building blocks of many organic chemicals), or it may bond to another element with double or triple bonds. How elements combine is reliant on the bonding process between them, and then exterior effects can alter that. If you look at the periodic table you will see that where columns are numbered 1 – 8, that also tells you how many electrons are spinning in their outermost shell, the number of bonds that can be formed can be derived from this. Some elements do not like to combine with others at all – noble chemicals (the eighth column).
