Electron Configuration- An electron configuration is the composition of atoms in different elements. Electron configurations are made up of a certain amount of electrons, which vary by element, that lie on various orbitals around a single nucleus. In 1923 Niels Bohr was the first to propose that the periodicity in the properties of the elements might be explained by the electronic structure of the atom. His proposals were based on the then current Bohr Model of the atom, in which the electron shells were orbits at a fixed distance from the nucleus. The following year, E.C. Stoner incorporated Sommerfeld's third quantum number into the description of electron shells. However neither Bohr's system nor Stoner's could correctly describe the changes in atomic spectra in a magnetic field. Pauli realized that the Zeeman effect must be due only to the outermost electrons of the atom, and was able to reproduce Stoner's shell structure, but with the correct structure of subshells. The form of the periodic table is closely related to the electron configuration of the atoms of the elements. The outermost electron shell is often referred to as the "valence shell" and determines the chemical properties.

Spectroscopy- Spectroscopy is a technique that uses the interaction of energy with a substance to perform an analysis. The data that is obtained from spectroscopy is called a spectrum. A spectrum can be used to obtain information about atomic and molecular energy levels, molecular geometries, chemical bonds, interactions of molecules, and related processes. Often, spectra are used to identify the components of a substance. The type of spectroscopy we use to identify elements is know as infrared spectroscopy. The infrared absorption spectrum of a substance is sometimes called its molecular fingerprint. Each element has a colors and placement of these colors using the infrared absorption method.

Rutherfordium- This somewhat recently discovered element was founded in 1969 by Albert Ghiorso and named after Lord Rutherford, a New Zealand chemist and physicist. Scientists working at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna, Russia, first reported the production of rutherfordium in 1964. They bombarded atoms of plutonium-242 with ions of neon-22, forming what they believed to be atoms of rutherfordium-260. In 1969, a group of scientists working at the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory, now known as the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, in Berkeley, California, attempted to confirm the Dubna group's discovery. Lacking the equipment needed to accelerate neon ions, the Berkeley group, led by Albert Ghiorso, bombarded atoms of californium-248 and californium-249 with ions of carbon-12 and carbon-13, producing atoms of rutherfordium-257, rutherfordium-258, rutherfordium-259 and rutherfordium-261. They were, however, unable to produce the same isotope as the Dubna group. Credit for the discovery of rutherfordium is still under debate.