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Revamping The Periodic Table?
vinohradska writes "There is an interesting article on the periodic table over at Slate: 'Oxford ecologist Philip Stewart has designed a new periodic table of the elements, and it's a hit. American schools are placing orders daily for Stewart's table, and the Royal Society of Chemists recently sent a copy to every British secondary school. Stewart's is the only remake to achieve widespread adoption since Dmitri Mendeleev invented the original periodic table in a fit of brilliance in 1869.' "
The weirdest thing is though, the table itself has a backdrop of some scene of a dinner party where there's 3 robed figures, 1 fat 2 skinny, 28 figures that bear an uncanny resemblance to a disciple of some sort, even a conjurer and mariachi band!
Will wank off Linus Torvalds for fame.
Since the painfully brief article buries the most relevant piece of this story 5 pages into a linked slideshow: An image of the chart in question.
::curmudgeony voice:: Dunno... certainly looks prettier, but at quick glance I can gather a lot more information from an "old school" chart.
Entrepreneur : (noun), French for "unemployed"
I trust this won't affect The Elements Song by Tom Lehrer. If you've never heard the song, or haven't listened to it since your high school Chemistry teacher played it for you in class, check out the horribly clever Flash animation of the song at privatehand.com.
You are in error. No-one is screaming. Thank you for your cooperation.
Does anyone where we can get a free poster of the Periodic Table or better yet, a chart of the nuclides! It would be great for home schooling :)
Now where is it exactly?
If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
OMG SOEMOEN SI H4X0RING MAI B0X3N!1!
Sheesh, what ever happened to "rewrite in your own words"? I guess you were never taught about plagiarism in school, huh?
Yeah, right.
Well, we won't like it, being contrary nerds and all.
That slideshow is laughably unusable. Once you get to page 3, the text is long enough to scroll off the bottom of the window, with the navigation links even further below that. There's only one problem. Some brain-dead designer decided it would be a good idea to pop the slideshow open in a window that doesn't have scrollbars.
Brilliant!
Interesting, I guess this really is a 'periodic' table seeing as it's getting changed 'periodicaly' LOL
at Uncyclopedia.
The writeup mentioned that the chart had been bought by several schools, but I'm willing to bet that most of them are just putting them on the wall because they're pretty and sort of educational. The tiny dots for each element are going to be a lot harder to read (and stick additional information in) than a regular boxy chart.
Frankly, I liked the 1950s chart after it better. There was a certain beauty in the layout of that chart. The new chart is pretty much just the elements spiraled across a picture of a galaxy.
I read the internet for the articles.
It's good to finish off high school and join a college. As a part of high school chemistry, we were expected to know the periodic table by-heart - all the groups and atomic numbers and stuff like that.
I forgot to mention that http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemical_Galaxy is the wikipedia article.
The current list has its flaws, but the elements are organized and structured and there is room for the properties of each element on the chart, not on the side as an afterthought.
Hmm! I agree. This new skin looks much better.
There's a good collection of periodic tables here. Also note that the periodic table referred to in the article is similar to one produced by Thoedor Benfey.
Nerd 1: Come on, Mr. Simpson, you'll never pass this course if you don't know the periodic table.
Homer: Ehh, I'll write it on my hand.
Nerd 1: Ho! Including all known lanthanides and actinides? Ha, ha! Good luck.
When you have nothing left to burn you must set yourself on fire
I remember seeing one of those spiral periodic tables more than 10 years ago. I still have the book and I guess it wasn't news even then.
Just shows again: it's all about the marketing (sadly).
The poster looks cool and all, but from a good look at it I'm not sure it preserves all the relationships you learned back in Chem 101. Remember... things like electronegativity? [on a periodic table, as you go up and right things get more electronegative] There is a general trend across the periodic table as we know it; by looking at the table you can observe that flourine is more electronegative than nitrogen, and so on. And s, p, d, f shells are logically laid out. It doesn't seem like a circular chart would be as intuitive.
-everphilski-
How the hell does this article qualify as interesting? And what's the big deal? Some
guy with no clue copies an idea he once saw
to produce a less usable form of one of the
most recognizable/universal data structures
on the planet.
Were that I say, pancakes?
Stewart created his table in part because he remembered being deeply impressed, at the age of 12, by a similar one he saw at the science pavilion of the 1951 Festival of Britain. An impressionistic swirl in vivid colors created by the artist Edgar Longman, the table stood little hope of being adopted by classrooms, but it spurred Stewart to study science. He recalls being struck by nature's underlying order: "I realized that the atoms that make up a galaxy can be arranged in just the same form as the galaxy itself." There's a few points from page 5 of the slideshow that really hit home. 1) First, he basically ripped this idea off from a previous chart built in 1951, modernized, gave it a better "UI" and is now shipping it out to the masses. Sound familiar?
2) On a positive note, I believe that the visual upgrades to the chart (although, will color blind people have any issues getting the full content from the chart now?) will definitely help students remember and learn emelents easier. The visual separation should definitely increase the ability for students to remember how many different colors, how many elemnts per color per spiral, etc. 3) What I think is the most interesting point of all of this is the relation of the elements being able to be tied back together and done so in a shape that mirrors the overall shape of the galaxy. It's sort of like the movie "Pi" where we can see trends, shapes, circles and spirals all within our life and this would be just one more example.
Hagrin.com
Element: Unobtainium Still trying to obtain the atomic weight of that one.
Sorry about the writing. Robot fingers, you know? Cliff Steele in DOOM PATROL #23
IANAC (I am not a chemist so I'm allowed to be dumb), whats the question marks at the right edge about?
I think it would be a bit better without the background being so complicated, it is a bit distracting.
http://www.nato.int/docu/pub-form.htm/
You can get the periodic table in English or French (Bon Jour!). You can also get other such wonderful documents as "NATO after Istanbul" in languages varying from Azeri, Macedonian, and Ukranian!
(I don't know if it still works, I did it several months back. It takes several weeks to get the package to you from, I believe, Sweden.)
I kept getting bombarded by a near lethal dose of popupium....
I guess I'll need to inoculate myself with a little firefoxium...
DEAD DEAD DEAD DELETE ME
This is old news.
The "widespread acceptance" is that it got trendy with some high school teachers.
I remember when our HS chemistry teacher (years ago) showed us a few alternate tables to remind us that there are relationships, and that the periodic table isn't just the 2d table at the back of the chemistry textbook.
The current organization of the periodic table is almost burned into my brain. Six years after touching my last chemistry text book, I can still remember that Zinc is too close to the non-metals and that there's a huge fuss about what the names of those artificial elements that they started naming it Unun to avoid controversy.
My point being that it is a mnemonic chart more than anything else these days (unlike the days back then, when there were known gaps in the table). Mendeleev must have had guts of steel to leave them blankQuidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur
Is there any scientific relevance to the layout of this chart whatsoever. If there is I could not find it in a brief read of the article. If I remember correctly from HS chemistry then the last chart had a layout that made it very easy for doing all the chemistry stuff that I can't remember the names of anymore.
Still and all, I will probably have it only as a demo tool. The standard chart is much easier to read. It also shows electron configurations more clearly than the spiral does.
Human being (n.): A genetically human, genetically distinct, functioning organism.
The old chart has stood the test of time. It is clear and easy to read, unlike this new one.
Oooooh. Shiny.
Mrs. Krabappel: Now, on with the Science lesson: who can tell me the atomic weight of Bolonium?
Martin: Ooh ooh ooh! Delicious?
Mrs. Krabappel: Correct. I would also have accepted "snacktacular."
--- What
I remember sitting in high school chem in 1994, thinking that the periodic table would be much better represented as a conical helicoid - a spiral wrapped around a cone.
A few years later I saw a list of known isotopes arranged one element per line and indented based on the weight of the nucleus, with simple hydrogen in the eupper-left corner. The stable isotopes were colored differently, and the color band formed a skewed triangle that would have also wrapped nicely around a cone.
The only surefire protection against Microsoft infections is abstinence. - The Onion
The best way to learn the periodic table is to have it printed on the back of a T-shirt that a cute co-ed is wearing. :P
(You have to see the movie Evolution to understand.)
Why is the periodic table superimposed on top of a galaxy? Seems pointless. And why is hydrogen grouped in with Silicon and gallium, rather then the Alkali metals like lithium and sodium?
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Sex Position Periodic Table
:)
Enjoy.
I think one of the most importent aspects of the table is to provide an overview of how the atoms align to eachother.
The table is not a lookup table for atom details of data. There are so many details (protons, weight, melting point, etc...) in regard to each atom, that no table can really display them proberly.
If you are a chemist you will know most of this by heart, so the table is best for teaching the concepts. To provide an overview.
In my opinion the new table do solve some of the issues the old table had. Especially now that it is round, that allows the end collums to meet.
You could almost say; look at the table and tell me how the atom "behvior groups" are like. Now look at the new table, and answer the same question.
In both cases you still need to learn about the "behvior groups"...
-:) Oh no - not again.
www.rednebula.com
No chemists really think that the lanthanides and actinides are "footnotes" in the periodic table. In truth both rows should be inserted under Group 3. We just put them under the table because the first option would make the table too wide.
Hydrogen is difficult to place in a group because it's basically a single proton with a single electron whizzing around it. In fact, in organic chemistry we usually just refer to hydrogen ions as "protons" -- which they are. The element itself has some properties of halogens and some properties of alkali metals, which is why it sometimes gets put in "both" groups.
Practising chemists usually know where the elements they work with lie in the periodic table. Outside of school use, the main use for periodic tables is to quickly find atomic weights (sometimes also electronic configurations or physical properties). Annotated variants of the "old version" are great for this. If this data can't be found quickly, the periodic table is useless.
It's nothing revolutionary, it's just the same old table drawn in a circle. The only true changes were the introduction of the loan neutron and the orientation of hydrogen. Otherwise, going out from the center are the same groups, and if you go counter-clockwise, you see the identical table with a gap now for the f-block atoms.
then people will look at it and say "Gee. It's Pretty, but it's also PRETTY USELESS." and this will go the way of the Edsel and the AMC Matador. (brrrr- I get chills just thinking about that ugly POS)
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
and the filter functions
i guess black and white printing and usability wernt in the brief
Here: New Periodic Table
It's less cluttered and easier to read than the "Galaxy" version.
There are 2 kinds of people in this world. Those that can keep their train of thought,
I used to play this educational game for the TRS-80 called "Atom" http://nitros9.stg.net/atom.html.
The screen showed a central nucleus, with spinning electron holes. Your job was to capture free electrons with your little ship and shoot them into the holes. You started with the first shell with 2 holes, one for H and one for He, and then the next shell of 8 appeared for you to fill, etc. etc. Eventually the screen got very cramped, which must be why they stopped at 54.
If you fired the electron and missed the hole, you'd hit the nucleus, and the whole thing would explode. Very frustrating once you had made it all the way to Germainium (I remember playing this game about the same time as the Jackson's Victory Tour, and being tickled that there was an element named Germainium, but I digress).
In all seriousness, no seriously, the original chart is an engineering tool and its columns and rows are of importance and relate elements in terms of their chemical properties. I don't think the swirly conveys that as intuitively.
No, modern charts have all the elements that can exist on them, the 'gaps' are there because lighter elements only have a few valence electrons. For example, hydrogen and helium are very far apart on the table, but actualy they only differ by one electron. And since Hydrogen has one extra electron, it is grouped with lithium, sodium, potasium, etc. Helium has 'all' it's electrons so it gets grouped with neon, xenon, argon, etc.
There's still spaces to to add onto at the end for elements like Unununium which include larger and larger elements. But there are no 'gaps'.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
We figured out what all the elements were and said ... "ooh look, there's a pattern". We've figured out what all the genes are, now we need a "Periodic Table of the Genes".
I rather like this table, rather than the busy one with the galaxy as a background: more information with less cruft.
I believe it was in last month's "Discover" magazine that a different new periodic table was discussed; this one was designed by an earth scientist and was oriented specifically toward his professional needs. There's no reason that it should replace the "standard" periodic table, but if it's better for his needs, more power to him.
The periodic table is a kind of model, and like all models, it's just one way of simplifying the real world and diagraming it for easy understanding by humans. There's no reason everyone should use one model of anything for all purposes, and if this new "galaxy" chart helps middle school kids learn and understand chemistry before moving on to the "standard" periodic table, it's a good thing.
helium next to lithium, neon next to natrium and so on, seems counterintuitive to me.
The old table has a line break at these points, which makes the number of electron shells easier to see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Galaxymap1.jpg
100% with you. Hell, the periodic table has been around longer than the fool who thought he'd quit his illustration class and pretend to be a scientist. Mendeleev was a genius, and i've never understood why he never got the respect he deserved. He was quite literally DECADES ahead of his time whose first draft of the table was written on a cocktail napkin. For those who couldnt be bother to read my rant: Mendeleev = Good This Other Bloke = Bad Science = Pitiful excuse for knowledge
You feel sleepy. Close your eyes. The opinions stated above are yours. You cannot imagine why you ever felt otherwise.
Don't tell this guy!
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
I guess I've just never looked at this table very much, its sort of a...periodic table.
Its a nice picture indeed, I like the look of it, although I agree with some previous posters that a resizing is in order so more information can be associated with each element 'bubble'.
However, I can't remember enough of the properties of individual elements to grasp the underlying structure of this periodic table. I remember my chemistry teacher explaining the elegance of the square periodic table by how the electron orbits are mapped out, the total charge of each element in vertical columns and all the neat stuff like that. What I would like to see before passing judgement on this new one is a mapping of all those cool features of the old table into the new table, so I can figure out how it works and if it truely does lend itself to a better understanding of the elements.
If all the nice relational properties of the old table are preserved in the new one in some sort of structure, then with some tweaking it might be quite useful. But until someone can point those features out to me, a pretty picture it will remain.
This is not a sig.
The strange thing is that high school chemistry books that I've taught from treat Mendeleev as a sort of Socrates/demigod figure, yet make no mention of Moseley's contributions, which really advanced chemistry. We wouldn't know anything about the inner workings of the atom if we didn't know and understand atomic numbers.
As for this new poster... it would be something I'd put up on the wall of my classroom to attract attention and give students a new way of looking at the elements, but for any serious work, we'd still have to use the standard periodic table. There's nothing wrong with looking at the elements in a new way, but that doesn't mean it will be useful beyond generating interest in science.
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. -- Gandhi
Not a bad poster for "Think Geek".
On the otherhand it sucks as a useful tool.
If someone is passing you on the right, you are an asshole for driving in the wrong lane.
This is what i call a perfect example to scare the real scientists away. This Philip Stewart dude should go into the arts section of Slate instead. This new "chart" only enhances feelings of drug addicts and students on weeds, crack or dope. Is this Stallwart dude a crackpot also?
Robert
How swell the new clock design is... NOT. Am I the only one thinking of the electron count when looking at the periodic table and knowing where the element are in regards to that? I think not. So this may be a good way to get young scientists hooked on something flashy and nice looking but the functionality of the table just went out the door. Granted there might be other functional additions by having it as a clock BUT through out my entire life I have had way more people not knowing how to use a round clock than a squarish table. How many here can read the Clock without the numbers being there? No not those digital clocks you stoopid clutz.
Stick to the biblical periodic table: earth, water, air and fire....
...richie - It is a good day to code.
Now the periodic table. Is nothing that I learned in school sacred?
Intron: the portion of DNA which expresses nothing useful.
Much about the chemistry of the elements can be obtained from:
8 501080/qid=1121871924/sr=1-5/ref=sr_1_5/002-082468 3-5368037?v=glance&s=books
0 633654/qid=1121872078/sr=8-1/ref=pd_bbs_1/002-0824 683-5368037?v=glance&s=books&n=507846
Essential Trends in Inorganic Chemistry by D.M.P. Mingos, D. M. P. Mingos
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/019
and
Chemistry of the Elements by A. Earnshaw, Norman Greenwood
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/075
The first thing that jumped out at me was the placement of Hydrogen under carbon. I think that this is plainly wrong. As the parent post said, Hydrogen can be ambiguous. You could make an arguement it should be with the halides since it is missing 1 electron to complete the shell. Having it under carbon just makes no sense.
Anyone have any good arguements for having it under carbon?
Sell posters make $$...I prefer the classic one.
ok so I havent looked at one of these things for alot of years but how the hell are you supposed to read that or even understand it
the old squared one makes alot more sense to me
I think it's sad that while American schools have to order and pay for these things out of their already over stretched budgets they have gone out to every Secondary School in Britain.
I thought the periodic table had already been rearranged once, and that the one you see on classroom walls (with the long, thin stretch of transition metals in the middle and two lines of heavy and maybe-radioactive metals off at the bottom) was the revised version. The previous arrangement had a lot more special cases and odd bits. I don't have the details but I'm sure I saw an Open University programme about this long long ago.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
There is a lot of whitespace. To be as easy to read as a conventional periodic table, this chart would have to be printed much larger. I'd think that a good graphic designer could take care of much of that problem, however.
I like the spiral nature, although that's a little hard to read as well.
As a scientist and educator, I'd say he's done a good job. As a graphic design, the new table leaves a lot to be desired. I wouldn't fault the author for that, the skills necessary for good science or good teaching don't have much in common with the skills for good design.
Jimmy Stewart, P
How can anyone get a decent education with such small pictures? :-)
And I'm trying to see if I "know it all" or need additional education.
Most people's preferences are to stay with the things that they already know, and what they're familiar with. (except in mating, but that's a whole 'nother issue).
... could this be a better form for someone who isn't already familiar with the periodic table that we've grown up with? Is it easier for children to understand?
I like the old chart because all of the detail is right there with the element -- I don't have to go and look at the chart along the right side of the page to get all of its details. But
Yes, the whole 'galaxy' thing is most likely to get children interested in science. They'd have probably worked a dinosaur in there, too, if someone hadn't pointed out that it'd then be sexist, and appeal to boys more than girls, but if it gets the kids interested, and maybe they then move to what we think of as the 'normal' periodic table (being that it's much more dense with its information), it doesn't really hurt anyone.
It just makes it so that the kids won't get jokes like the Periodic Table of Condiments quite as quickly. (of course, the folks who made it didn't understand the Periodic Table of Elements, or they'd have placed similarly behaving items in a column, with the most reactive elements towards the edges, except for the far right column for things that never go bad)
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
Then he failed on all accounts, since the 50's one - created by an actual artist, so it presumably "stimulates the imagination" - was also more usable, informative, and accurate.
The problem is, that it is forced into a spiral, while the tabular layout is a natural form that doesn't require force to make it fit.
_ Longman_1951.jpg
The forced layout is especially evident in this original: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:ChemicalGalaxy
If you use enough force, you can make anything fit...
Oh well, what the hell...
You just have to divide up the galaxy into areas. The humans get the S-block, the d-block elemets are all in vulcan space, and obviously the F-block would be out in the delta quadrant. :P
assuming all the other data a typical periodic table [poster sized or wall chart] crams in to each element's box can be added to this depiction.
Don't you see that all the orbital or shells [that make for a confusing notation that chemists painfully memorize and physicists gleefully re-explain with Schroedinger's wave equations that mean nothing to most of us] are made much more intuitive in this representation? This new chart can still give those with no education in atomic physics the intuitive recognition of "what should come next", "what's missing" and "what will weigh more" as the old chart has. Consider that chem teachers are are told to regard as advanced any student who understands this notation[search for "Level 3, the student is able to...". Or considered how labored even a chem101 treatment of this material is.
One thing I will concede: Pauling's notion of "electronegativity", so useful to chemists, was clearly related to location of an element on the standard periodic table [changing most strongly as you traversed diagonally from lower left to upper right]...its not so clear here.
SLASHDOT: news for people who can't concentrate on work or have no life at all and got tired of yelling back at the TV.
From the article, about Mendeleev's periodic table: "Other problems remain, however. The modern table artificially breaks up the sequence of elements at the end of each row. Certain elements fit into it uncomfortably; for example, hydrogen sits above lithium, with which it shares few properties. ..."
Okay, I can see complaining about Hydrogen, but past that, I'm not sure how anybody who's taken (and at least payed attention part of the time) high school chemistry can justify reorganizing the chart. Sure, if you want a pretty poster for your classroom/lab/living room, the new one is nice, but if you want a chart that will quickly and concisely tell you several of the known properties of an element, Mendeleev's chart is the way to go.
"... And entire groups are relegated to footnotes."
If the writer of this blurb had payed attention in high school chemistry, he/she/it would know that the elements "relegated to footnotes" actually belong in the middle of the chart (like the illustration on the 4th slide indicates), and are stuck at the bottom to make the chart easily fit on a reasonable-sized page or poster. Is that a flaw in the chart? That's up to the viewer, but any chemist worth his salt will pick functionality over eye-candy.
Not that I don't want anybody to try. Let's just make the next one a little more useful.
This sig rocks the casbah.
The traditional periodic table is arranged the way it is for a reason. With an ordinary periodic table, simply looking at an element's position on the table will give you information about its
-electronegativity/electron affinity
-the radius of its electron cloud
-ionization energy
-lattice energy
-valence electron configuration
Maybe there's a way to deduce all that from this new "galaxy" aragnement, but the article doesn't mention it and it's not readily apparent to me.
The periodic table in the books is a 2 dimensional representation of our atomic understanding.
It can make more sense as a 3D construct.
So, if neutron star matter can't even be described, why is it occupying a space on the periodic table?
See this. (warning -- Flash animation).
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
The goddamn periodic table of elements.
You've got 110 of these naturally occurring elements, then 10 or 11 of these non-naturally occurring, man-made elements. They give 'em names like Einsteinium and Californium and Nobellium. And what I want to know is, if they're man-made, then how the hell can they be elements?
Y'know, it's bothering my mind.
- Upsie-Dasium (obscure MST3K reference)
Any others?
You never expect irony, do you?
Want to be a professional wrestler? Visit www.iyfwrestling.com
@iyfwrestling
Good to see a mention of superatoms there, even though it's buried in the last slide. Superatomic research is the relatively new study of how clusters of one element's atoms, in specific quantities, exhibit properties of heavier elements; in fact, of those whose weight is closest to the total weight of the cluster. There was an excellent article about superatoms in New Scientist a while back. You can read it online here. If you have any interest in chemistry, it's a pretty fascinating piece.
I am scientifically inaccurate.
This new periodic map shows less information in a more cluttered, hard to decipher way.
The 1950s spiral chart is much better than the overly stylaized galaxy, but all of this is really nothing new.
Its the same table, the same relationships between adjacent atoms in the rows and columns that make the perodic table revolutionary.
This is just crap to make education seem artsy and cool. Fine if it works, but it doesn't really change anything. If students get interested in chemistry becuase of this great, but they will shift to the normal chart later beucase it contains more information.
Isn't an ecologist someone that recycles cans? So this guy lives at Oxford and picks up garbage.
And I agree, slide 6 is waaaaay better than slide 5.
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
It's brainier than saying ".WS is the TLD for web services" when people should know that WS is a 2-character country code, but other than that, they're both false analogies.
"It's...full of stars!"
Hydrogen and Helium differ also by one proton and two neutrons.
Atomic H: 1 P, 1 e
Atomic He: 2 P, 2 N, 2 e
The reason they are grouped as they are (vertical groupings are really all that matters) is because, in their atomic state, those species have very similar physical properties.
That being said, oxidized Li is *somewhat* similar to He (atomic radius, further reactivity, etc).
IAAC (Chemist)
Does 'Sir William Ramsey' look *a lot* like Tom Selleck?
Check out the slide show (slide number 3)
Maybe a vote for a new element, PrivateDickium, or Higginsium?
A company named Instruments for Research and Industry, or I2R, sends out a calendar as part of its sales program. One month is devoted to some variation on the theme "periodic table." There was a spiral table with elongated arms for the transition metals, and so on. It looked a bit awkward as I recall, having to jam elements into inside corners and stretch them around outside corners.
Once, they had a ball-and-stick model of a periodate ion, H5IO6 with overall charge of -1, IIRC, which supported a clear, round tabletop. It was surrounded by workers in lab coats, and the conversation went as follows:
Lab Coat 1: "You call that a periodic table?"
Lab Coat 2: "Yes, it's our periodic table, and I can prove it. It's for our periodic coffee breaks."
The clearance system sounds logical. It is not. It is completely arbitrary. -- John Bolton
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I remember my A-Level chemistry teacher telling us that the table was not really flat but should be rolled into a cylinder. That is easy enough to imagine, removing the artificial separation of the edges and still easier to read than this pretty picture.
Don't put off until tomorrow what you can leave until the day after.
Can't believe there aren't enough /.ers familiar with nuclear science to bring up the Chart Of The Nuclides....
All of a sudden, everything on the P/T seems so oversimplified
Here's a link for those who don't know how to use Google: http://atom.kaeri.re.kr/
For us carnivores, "Sucking the marrow out of life" isn't a transcendentalist philosophy but a practical instruction.
My favorite mock table(s) of the elements are the onesfrom the inside covers of the Douglas Coupland novel, "Shampoo Planet".
I particularly like 1 H [Heaven] and 2 He [Hell].
It's counterclockwise, not anti-clockwise. Banish the Brit!
It's just wrapped so the left meets the right and put in a circle.
Electronegativity is there, you're just not looking at it right I guess.
This table adds one more thing, it relates the numbers to electron shells even more explicitly than the other chart. The shells are there, they are the circles in the galaxy, they're even in the correct order they are filled, from inside to out.
But that having been said, this chart is a loser in my book. It doesn't add much to the other table. And most imporantly, it's like 95% non-information. Which means you have to print it huge just to see any information at a glance at all.
I can't see how this chart is going to supplant the current chart, which has nearly the same informative content in 1/20th the space.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
Netstumbler just gave me
http://www.numberspiral.com/index.html
a few hours ago.
you can have my violent video games when you pry them from my cold, dead hands.
Prime UID Club
Now he's going to have to build a new table of elements
"I'm not impatient. I just hate waiting." - My Dad
I dunno -- I prefer the periodic table table here:
http://www.theodoregray.com/PeriodicTable/
Take an hour or so and make your own periodic table with the spreadsheet of your choice. You can add columns when you learn more about what _periodic_ means when used in the context of properties and structure.
I've never seen the Stowe table before, but I wish I had. It's really elegant and captures a lot of information efficiently. It also clearly illustrates the symmetry and structure of the table--in my opinion, much more clearly than the Stewart table that is the focus of the article. Does anyone more knowledgable about chemistry or physics know of any drawbacks to the the Stowe table, other than relatively superficial things like the size or spacing of text?
I'm a chemist, just finishing my Ph.D. The current periodic table is in wide use because it is very functional. Although the whole galaxy picture is cute, it lacks in both simplicity and functionality.
I can't imagine how this would actually *help* anyone trying to remember details. I find it really funny that it's described as a 'mneumonic aid'.
I find it REALLY funny that this became a slashdot article.
One of the best periodic tables I have seen is the one made by late costarican scientist Gil Chaverri (1921-2005) based on electon structure. You can read automatically the electronic configuration of every single element automatically. By the way: sorry for the lousy pic but 'Gil Chaverri tables' have become scarce lately and I personally do not own one. http://muweb.millersville.edu/~iannone/TablaChaver ri (in spanish).htm
I suppose this is to be expected, periodically....
Don't forget to help your waitress back up after you tip her.
I'd say it's enough of a flaw that makes it worth rearranging. The footnote version breaks up the look of the thing, and leaves you with a lot of unused space when you do it in proper space. If it's as functional when spiralised (and I see no reason it wouldn't be), then the chart is better that way.
I am trolling
A circular or conical chart is obviously required by the last two rows not fitting right in a rectangular chart; but I still much prefer this version
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As a physical chemist I view the Noble Gases as a very important book end that serves the distinct purpose of deliniating a full shell and everything after that represent the valence shell which is what controls chemistry.
I make my face look like this and concerned words come out.
Lisa, admiring a private school's facilities: "Their periodic table has two hundred and fifty elements!" Skinner: "Our school board has cut us back to sixteen. All of them lanthanides!"
qntm.org
I think I will stick with the original.
My Periodic Table - unfortunately I developed this when MS ruled the browser world so it will only work in IE.
If we're talking about non-traditional layouts, I prefer Stowe's.
Why do my fits always involve wetting myself instead of inventing something brilliant?
They missed the point entirely, and would have been better off making two distinct versions sold as a bundle. They both would resemble the current periodic table, but one would have a naked woman ghosted in the background, the other a naked man.
Using my new patented (R), (C) and (CC), method, I guarantee that high school age kids would stare at it for hours during class, and the learning would flow from that. It can't be any dumber than the current US educationals standards, and adults can enjoy it too.
As a side benefit, it may end up in garages and truckstops world-wide. Educate the masses I say!
-Charlie
http://www.superliminal.com/pfractal.htm has an interesting representation, dating back to 1995.
Isn't this just a periodic Mandela of the elements, like KSR suggested in The Years of Rice and Salt?
io hymen hymnaee io
io hymen hymnaee
OK OK, it doesn't make a LOT of sense, but if you can remember the gist of the story you have the first four rows of the table memorized.
When one person suffers from a delusion, it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called Rel
It has no structure or elegance; it is just a plian, simple list. Spend a little more time looking at the chart. The color coded radials correspond to the columns/valence groups in the old chart. The spiral corresponds to increasing atomic number. Basically, this is just a remapping of the old chart from rectangular to polar coordinates: The same information is there, but the format is different. You're right that the circles need to be larger to contain more information, but the additional information was never really part of the purpose of the periodic table anyway. The table has always been a tool for classifying the chemical properties of the elements, it wasn't intended as a reference of the specific attributes of each element.
We are the 198 proof..
Or is it just an excuse for another job around the house - http://www.theodoregray.com/PeriodicTable/
Just because your paranoid doesn't really mean they aren't out to get you
Then again, I think they should still teach students about the logarithmic slide rule!
Did anyone else notice that this "new" chart is just the old one rolled up, then flattened? It's not such a great chart... Most of the information is lost in the tiny circles. A standard periodic table is far more useful...
I remember for my chemistry exams simply remembering the layout of the first 20 odd elements of the table by remembering the string HHeLiBeBCNOFNeNaMgAlSiPSClArKa (I think - it was 17 years ago so please bear with me - those last few look suspect..) - to explain I used to say the string in my mind as an aide-memoir. (Helli-Bebcnof-neenaa-megal-sips-clarca phonetically) How the hell would I manage that today?! But much prettier to look at and the valences seem to make more sense now..
Wow I really dislike the 'we dont need a footnote for X elements' anymore argument. The current periodic table tries to convey 4 key concepts with its current layout:
1. What seperates diffrent elements in number of protons
2. electron shells/sub orbitals
3. radius size, and other properties dealing with how many electrons it has
4. Common physical charecteristics.
Number 2 is my argument of why there is a 'footnote' in the periodic table. the first 2 columns are s orbitals the ones in the middle Sc-Zn are d orbitals and on the other side is p orbitals starting with B-NE. The footnote is f orbitals. Now please dont start the argument, well if that is the case then He should be in column 2. Alot of Chem programs do this weird thing where He is produced twice on the periodic table once above colomn 2 and in its usual place.
As for the new layout it dystroys this simple oh what orbital is being filled layout. as well as for the life of me I cant figure out why H, He, Be, and Li are on the same rung.
Never could figure out why my girl liked my bitch tits, then I found out she was a lesbian.
Adrian McPherson (barely a QB at Florida State) stole your sig back in 2002.. when will I receive my $500?
/. spaztech
Why bother with a chart? If you know the mass and charge of protons, neutrons, and electrons, and h, you can derive the Periodic Table with a wee bit of quantum mechanics.
Apologies if already posted.... http://www.theodoregray.com/PeriodicTable/
Arranging words on a page where each line ends abruptly and then the words begin on the next line is a horribly confusing, outdated idea. Our children would make much better sense out of our sentences if we wrote them all in spirals over a pretty background of outer space.
I was talking about the list on the right of the chart. In the "old chart" this information was in the chart and so followed its structure. In the "new chart" the properties (weight, etc.) are in a simple list on the right of the chart.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
That said, the word "Periodic" in "Periodic Table of the Elements" explicitly states the cyclical nature of the table.
"Periodic" doesn't have anything to do with periodic acid, HIO4 or H5IO6, does it?
A much better chart for physicists and physical chemists is Stowe's 3-D periodic table. http://chemlab.pc.maricopa.edu/periodic/stowetable .html which arranges things according to the principal quantum numbers. It comes out completely symmetric.
"Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?" - Patrick Henry
and i've met a person who graduated a public school and public university who couldn't read.
a sp?article=34303&archive=true
http://www.connectionnewspapers.com/printarticle.
That is beautiful. It makes me want to go back to studying physics again (been many years). Just looking at it hints at the underlying structures of modern physics, and makes you need to understand.
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
Actually in one of Tufte's books he discusses a spiraling representation of the periodic table. Discussion may develop at http://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-ms g?msg_id=0000v6&topic_id=1&topic=
Since the table is just a theory you know.
j pg
http://img251.imageshack.us/my.php?image=scan5co.
(From the cover of Sceptical Inquirer)
I was not impressed by the table shown in the Slate article, but IANAC.
Surfing around to look at other versions, I saw one (this link for the jpg, which is also shown on this web page as the work of one Christian Drury), which I thought both beautiful and practical.
The elements seem to be laid out in the same way that they are in the traditional table, but instead of the boxes with text, the elements are portrayed by orbital diagrams. The jpg is low resolution and cut off at the edges. I could not find any additional information about the table on google.
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
Ya canna change the laws of physics!!!
;-)
Bring back the OLD chart!
if (!sig) { printf("Signature Unavailable\n"); }
For some reason my earlier post got lost or posted as AC, but yes - Mendeleev was onto something. I'm rereading a old found copy of "The Ascent of Man" and Bronowski devotes a chapter to the periodic table.
You can tell all those properties at a glance, and even more interesting to me is that Mendeleev recognized that the Table was laid out intutively, with elements grouped by their *tactile* properties in columns. He was even able to make predictions of the properties of undiscovered elements like Germanium, which sits right above Silicon in teh table.
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
Others have posted links to many periodic tables but this one in particular I think is very good, and a useful learning tool for those who are very visual learners (2 variations of the same thing, the second is a program that can be purchased):e .html
http://chemlab.pc.maricopa.edu/periodic/stowetabl
http://www.qivx.com/ispt/ptw_qn.php
Well, the important thing you must understand is that in the US you are not allowed to refer to Mendeleev table as such (use "periodic table" instead) for the very same reason you are not allowed to refer to Tsiolkovsky equiation as such (use "rocket equation" instead) and so on (the other examples are numerous). This story with the table is just a part of widely forced breeding program passed under the guise of "patriotic upbringing". Everything that is of non-US origin must be either downplayed or distorted to appear "invented in the US". The attempt to introduce the new format of the table is nothing else than just a next step in that direction. It says that "schools are ordering the new table"? LOL!!! They better do! See what will happen if they try to refuse...
no seriously! The new chart is okay!
The only real weakness about this diagram is that it is mirror-opposite of what it should be. Elements should appear clickwise instead of anti-clockwise. The reason is obvious...
Shouldn't the heavier elements sink to the center of the galaxy ?
Just kidding
Also consider:
Pauling, L. General Chemistry (Dover Publications) ISBN 0486656225 -a university-level intro chem text that is as readable as a "popularization" and -as is the norm for DOVER publications- CHEAP (about 20 bucks at Barns and Noble retail stores) but nonetheless a high quality physical object (acid free paper etc. -unlike many 100-buck-plus "current" university texts)
Also be sure to check out http://cavemanchemistry.com/cavebook/ for an execellently geeky hands-on exposition of chemical technology that you CAN try at home or in a high school or community college lab -smelt metal , make acid, build rocket engines, make plastic, and many others ( the site offers a book for sale but all text and illustrations are online)
This is typical of the current US public education system way of doing things: desperate for results, throw money at new ways of teaching things, rather than learning to teach properly in the first place. Huge sums of money used for inter-publisher arguments about things like including creationism in biology texts should be spent on funding more faculty (or properly paying the current faculty!)
Show me a public school in the US in which every student who has taken chemistry can accurately describe the logic behind the Mendelev arrangements, and I'll agree that we are qualified to take the more difficult step of teaching to a spiral table.
Hi, wake up, folks!
9 &threshold=-1&commentsort=0&tid=146&tid=14&mode=th read&pid=13113342
You all missed the real issue here:
http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=15642
I am a reporter with USA Today and I am considering writing a story about the "new" table. Anyone willing to go on the record? You need to be actively teaching chemistry (or using the periodic table in your classroom- not necessarily the new one, although that would be great), or a chemist working at a University.
I'm waiting to hear Archimede's opinion on the matter, and then Uncle Al's response. If you don't know who these guys are, don't moderate.
Here's a periodic table that kids might be interested in.
If you disagree with me on social issues, then it's pretty clear that you are a narrow-minded bigot.
Slashdot has already reported on a new periodic table!
If you disagree with me on social issues, then it's pretty clear that you are a narrow-minded bigot.
Because look at how well socially adjusted other children in school are! They see infantile behavior and are surrounded by immature role models, adapt their behaviors and become sterling members of the community!
You get grades for "plays well with others" because the modern educational paradigm is a joke, and that's the punchline.
Babies look around and learn behaviors from those around them. They notice noise coming out of the adults, and so they try and emulate that. As they get closer to speech, more and more positive reinforcement (along with some brute force awesome brainskills) result in omg a grasp of language. Babies do not learn their language by sitting in a crib with ten other babies all drooling with one another and comparing notes.
Without mature role models (older children, with whom there is no socialization in school, or adults), there are no mature behaviors observed to emulate.
Know lots of rude, maladjusted home schooled kids, do you? I know lots of rude, maladjusted public and private schooled kids. (You're welcome to infer from the tone of this comment which I am)
You can keep your unprovoked hate mongering to yourself thanks.
If you don't agree with people's religion you can keep it to yourself.
Mods, this isn't funny at all, it's trolling.
Would it be funny if he start making jokes about skin colour or perhaps their ethnic background.
I remember seeing a German periodic table from the 1930's. The long lanthanide and actinide loops were racetrack-shaped, so most of the elements has a squarish block of the chart where they wrote useful weight, number, and isotope data. It was not as minimal as the charts we used to have at school from the Mond Nickel company, but it worked.
The post and, apparently, article inaccurately imply that the table that we use today is substantially the same as that originally published by Mendeleev. Leaving to one side all the elements discovered subsequent to its original publication, Mendeleev's original table listed the elements in order of increasing mean atomic mass (of the natural form) and therefore, besides containing a number of discrepancies from today's tables, reflected a fundamental lack of the key understanding that it is electron structure (and, therefore, nuclear charge) that determines element chemistry and its periodicity. Since this last fact is fundamentally the most important thing the periodic table contains, it is inaccurate in a non-trivial way to say that we still use the same table that Mendeleev created. Most people use a somewhat similar table in a similar format, others a somewhat similar table in a different format. Give me a chart of the nuclides anyway, The Plasma Engineer
http://www.re-discovery.org/per_table.html
I thought nerds were supposed to be at the spearhead of progress or something, but on the Periodic Table they sound more conservative than many 90-year-olds. People have been making spiral versions for a hundred and forty years - even before Mendeleev - for the good reason that the sequence of elements is a continuum, and you can only make it into a table by chopping it into bits and losing many of the connections between neighbours. For example sodium seems 'opposite' fluorine when they are almost side by side. The point of a chart of all the elements is to show where they lie in relation to each other, not to convey detailed information on individual elements; that is much better done by a page in a book or on a screen. As for the galactic background, how else to say without words that the world of the unimaginably vast and the world of the utterly tiny are part of one reality? If that means using a lot of black ink, doesn't that symbolize the fact that 'solid' matter is in fact mostly the emptiness inside and between atoms and inside and between galaxies? As for saying that Stewart 'ripped off' Edgar Longman's 1951 mural (which was the first and until now the only elliptical periodic chart), that's the opposite of the truth: he has reminded the world of its existence and restored the colourful beauty of the original.
I enjoyed the humor of the parent post's link. However, what it misses is that Intelligent Design doesn't discount evolution "just because we don't like it," rather, because it simply does not accurately describe the diversity of life on the planet - nor does it sufficiently explain the complexity of the molecular mechanisms required to produce even the simplest of proteins.
What evolution really says is that amino acids were formed from simple organic compounds, chemically combined in the presence of sufficient activation energy (lightning). After that, DNA "evolves" and small evolutionary changes in DNA over the ages result in the life we see now. That's a pretty big leap - from amino acids, to complex proteins to DNA - each of which represent a many order-of-magnitude increase in complexity. In fact, more "evolution" would have to take place to go from simple amino acids to DNA than it would to go from single-cell organizms to human beings! How long did it take for all this to happen? I'm afriad that 3 billion years (the time from when the first single-celled fossils appear until beginning of the paleozoic era where complex life first shows up) is simply not enough time - probabilistically, mathmatically, realistically.
Intelligent Design has everything to do with the periodic table. If the quantum mechanical states didn't exist as they do, atomic structures could not exist to form the molecules which result in our proteins and amino acids in the first place. No periodicity, no life. The periodic table accurately shows how the physical properties of matter exist in the universe and how they relate to each other. Proponents of Intelligent Design believe that it accurately explains the diversity and complexity of life on the planet - something that evolution does not. As such, it takes more faith to believe in evolution than it does to believe in Intelligent Design - faith in a remote probabilistic outcome as opposed to a deliberate, reasoned existence.
I'm not asking you to believe in Intelligent Design - I'm just pointing out that taking cheap shots without the underlying background knowledge are a reflection of ignorance - and bigotry. Moreover, Intelligent Design is not associated with most other creationist organizations - we are not all the same.
This sig is a test. If this had been an actual sig, you would be reading something quite a bit wittier than this now.
yeah.yet another chart for the schoolkids who need craftpaper and scissors for learning addition, and need colourful pics to learn chemistry concept because they are fundamentally not interested in it. they are worried more about how to become the school jock and bed some girls than chemistry anyway.