The periodic table of chemical elements, often called the periodic table, organizes all discovered chemical elements in rows (called periods) and columns (called groups) according to increasing atomic ...

and all the elements in group 0 are unreactive non-metals. The zigzag, staircase, line in the diagram of the periodic table above separates the metals, on the left, from non-metals, on the right.

On 17 February 1869, Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleev jotted down the symbols for the chemical elements, putting them in order according to their atomic weights and inventing the periodic table.