Periodically, I look at the periodic table and think - that’s not very well designed.
Like, look at this big tall column on the left, and then a big gap, and then more tall
columns on the right. And this island of elements down here, totally disconnected from the rest?
It doesn’t feel very natural - so let’s rearrange the table! Obviously we don’t
want to ignore physical reality, but the idea of the periodic table, roughly speaking, is
that atoms are listed horizontally according to increasing atomic number and grouped vertically
according to shared properties, so these breaks here on the left and right, where it goes
from element 10 on the right to 11 way on the left - those are artificial. We should
really be cutting the periodic table out and then taping the edges together, into a nice
loop. Kind of like how there isn’t actually a giant disconnect between Russia and Alaska,
even if maps make it seem like that.
Anyway, once you join the Russia and Alaska of the periodic table, it makes a different
location seem like the obvious place to cut if we really want a flat table - right here.
Then we get the left-step periodic table, where the columns are all nicely stair-stepping
down, though really it’s even nicer if helium moves up above beryllium and next to hydrogen
where it so obviously belongs. This way of organizing the table looks really nice and
makes a fair bit of sense from a physics perspective , even if it doesn’t have the nice properties
of normal periodic tables where electronegativity and first ionization energy increase from
left to right and bottom to top.
But really, the periodic table should be a loop. The problem is, we still have a gap
between elements 20 and 21, maybe we can loop them too? And what about 4 & 5? If we join
them, we have a nice spiral periodic table, with no gaps between any of the numbers! Though
it’s even nicer if helium moves over above neon where it so obviously belongs. This version
kind of looks like a tiered cake, and goes really well on top of pointy trees!
Except in this table, elements with similar properties aren’t grouped together vertically
anymore. So we could attach the ones that are supposed to be grouped vertically, which
forces us to make some folds, and now we get this spiral rosette-y periodic table, sometimes
called “Mendeleev’s flower.” This really shows the structure of the table nicely, though
it’s not really a table any more, and it’s way too three dimensional for a lot of uses.
So let’s unspiral the spiral, and go back to basics - the one dimensional periodic table.
It’s actually pretty long - look at all those elements! And it’s a lot harder to
see the structure, though you can still see that certain properties repeat periodically
- hence, periodic table.
And if you match up those repeated patterns, and cut in all the right places, and do some
surgery , you arrive back at the familiar - if not super elegant - traditional periodic
table. Which table do you prefer?
This video was supported by Brilliant, which is also a brilliant holiday gift for anyone
who’s interested in math, science, puzzles, or cutting up periodic tables. Brilliant premium
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