Shapeshifting: Proposal For a New Periodic Table of the Elements

First time accepted submitter ramorim writes "In honor of the Chemist Day, celebrated in Brazil on this day June 18, 2013, I publish a proposal for a new Periodic Table of Elements (Original, in Portugese) in a modular spiral-hexagonal model, with continuity and connectivity for all constituent units of the matter. This proposal indeed permits to extrapolate the hypothetical elements of the G-block and H-block in the same model."

Comments

More missing elements, to to be discovered.

[Vincent77]

The logic of the table is that it predicts missing elements really well. Does this circular table do the same?

Re:More missing elements, to to be discovered.

[B'Trey]

I would consider an alternative periodic table a success if it predicts new elements or new interactions that the old one didn't.

This, right here. This is the only valid argument for changing an existing and well-understood model when there's no new evidence to consider.

The Periodic Table isn't a model, or at least not a functional model. It's a chart - a way to represent data. Arguably, a chart is a model of sorts but considering your comment concerning "new evidence," you certainly seem to be implying that it's a model of how things function and this new proposal provides an alternate functional model, which isn't the case. The proposed alternative isn't a new theory of elements. It doesn't change our idea of how things works. It simply presents the same information and understanding in a different way. If the new table doesn't provide any new predictive ability at all but it does, say, present the information in a way that's easier to grasp or makes relationships clearer, then it's worth considering and possibly worth adapting.

Re:Beehive not a table

[MozeeToby]

inherent expand-ability

Actually, if you expanded the table in the way that is intuitively obvious (and provides the most meaning) it's about 5x wider than it is tall making it difficult to work with in a physical sense. As it is almost always presented, important information is totally lost on most people when they look at it.

Iron-y coincidence?

[thatseattleguy]

One interesting feature of the table is the resulting position of iron(Fe) - it serves as the single, pivotal point that "links" the two halves of the table and spiral together.

And, of course, iron is at the bottom of the binding energy curve - it can't be fissioned or fusioned to provide net energy output.

My physics education is too far in the distant past to discern if these two things are just a coincidence - or significant feature resulting from the inherent structure of the table.

Interesting, but I don't get it

[Giant Electronic Bra]

I've seen various 'periodic tables' over the years (I have a chem degree), but this one just doesn't do anything for me. What exactly are the extra relationships being depicted here? In what sense is He for instance intermediate in properties between H and Li (which are vastly more similar to each other chemically than either one is to He and in the standard periodic table this is apparent). Nor do I see any special close affinity between say C and Al, yet they are adjacent in this table (in a standard periodic table these elements are fairly close but not adjacent).

I don't even understand the choice of positions of elements on this table. It seems in some degree arbitrary. Why a spiral? Why this PARTICULAR spiral arrangement? I really must be missing something here....