>> Wait, back up a sec - you mean there's a *reason* why the transition 
>> metals exist? And people actually know WTF this reason is??
> 
> Yes.

OK, that's quite impressive.

Last time I heard, an atomic nucleous has a cloud of electrons floating 
around it. (Seems reasonable - they're negatively charged, while the 
nucleous is positively charged. Why wouldn't they orbit it?) Except that 
rather than just floating around, they all stay 100% rigidly confined to 
a discrete set of orbit shells. (Um, WTF? Why?) And the inner-most shell 
can only hold 2 electrons (OK), the next shell can only hold 8 (um... 
OK), and next one out also holds 8 (er... why?), and the next shell can 
contain up to 18 electrons but when you start filling that shell you can 
only fill it up to a certain point, and then you have to go back and 
fill the shell below and then you can finish filling this shell (WTF?!) 
And the shell numbers are apparently just plucked out of the air, and 
the shell filling orders are completely arbitrary. And this is all 
assuming an atom with zero energy; apparently real atoms have more 
energy than that, which causes electrons to migrate between different 
shells, and when one falls back to a lower shell it emits energy 
(usually in the form of EMR). And don't even get me started on chemical 
bonding...

It all seems wildly complicated and completely random.

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