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.' "

Comments

An image of the chart.

[XorNand]

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.

Re:An image of the chart.

[sp3tt]

You have a trailing slash too much there, the correct link is:
http://img.slate.msn.com/media/1/123125/2093564/21 22917/2122918/2122942/Longman.jpg

Re:An image of the chart.

[dwhitman]

If he were dead, Tufte would be rolling in his grave. This thing is simultaneously an incredible example of chartjunk and low information density.

The image of the galaxy is what Tufte calls a "duck" - a decorative style element that dominates a chart without conveying useful information. The color coding is also chartjunk; it conveys nothing that isn't already implicit in an element's location in the chart. Most of the ink in this graphic (galaxy, color fills) conveys zero information.

It gets worse. To keep from obscuring the cute galaxy picture, the designer shrank the atomic numbers to an illegible point size, and then threw away useful data (like atomic weight, electronic configuration and common oxidation states, all of which fit into a rather smaller chart than this which is hanging on my wall.)

I'm giving away my age with this post, but...

[The I Shing]

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.

Re:I'm giving away my age with this post, but...

[operagost]

Geez. Don't forget to add a KLAATU BARADA NIKTO at the end to awaken the dead.

Link to Wikipedia Article

[vinohradska]

I forgot to mention that http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemical_Galaxy is the wikipedia article.

Interesting, but not useful chart

[waynegoode]

The new table looks interesting and it does give a new perspective, but I don't think it will replace the old periodic table. The main reason is that the "table" is mostly whitespace, or in this case, blackspace. Because of this the symbol for eachelement is written so small that it is hard to read and the other information is relegated to a list on the side. People complain who complain about the inelegance of the current periodic table should complain even louder about this list. It has no structure or elegance; it is just a plian, simple list.

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.

More Periodic Tables

[Lev13than]

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.

I'm not sold on it

[everphilski]

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-

Interesting Points from SlideShow

[hagrin]

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.

ObSimpsons

[Marc2k]

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."

The slideshow is a little misleading

[jhw3]

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.

Not the first remake

[madmancarman]

While some may say it doesn't qualify as a "remake", Henry Moseley's work resulted in the reorganization of the periodic table by atomic number, as opposed to Mendeleev's table, which went by atomic weight and chemical properties. Unfortunately, Moseley was killed at the age of 27 while fighting in World War I.

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.

(almost) RIGHT

[TheLetterPsy]

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)