by the elements family

The periodic table of the elements lists all of the known elements.

It contains a list of all known elements.

activity series is the list of elements arranged in descending order of chemical activity.

Linear list for example is array, linked list, stack, ...

It is called linear because all elements in those data structures are in linear sequence. We have first and the last elements in the list. If there is N elements in list, we know that all elements are in such sequence na, na+1.

Non-linear structures would be trees and graphs.