The elements that make up each column of the periodic table share a set of common traits. Here, a chemist describes group 15 and the crucial role they play in life.

In other periodic table news, Ezequiel Skorepa, a graduate student at the National University of Jujuy in Argentina, has designed a cylindrical periodic table that can be printed using a 3-D printer.

Overall, it seems like the most out-of-place element on the periodic table, a gentleman among scoundrels. Like Slate on Facebook. Follow us on Twitter.

“I was a chemistry major in undergrad,” Siegfried told me. “I wrote papers about the history of the periodic table.” When he was a college student, the table ended at element 103, lawrencium.