Chemical Galaxy
A New Vision of the Periodic Table of the Elements
The matter in the world about us is almost entirely made from 83 elements, which differ from each other by the positive electric charge on their central nucleus and hence the number of electrons they are able to attract. Another 10 elements exist in trace quantities as unstable products of the radioactive breakdown of the two heaviest elements, and another 20 elements have been made in the laboratory.
Chemists discovered in the 1860s that if the elements are arranged in the order of the mass of their atoms (or as later realized, the charge on their nucleus), chemical characteristics recur regularly. Dmitri Mendeleyev in 1869 published his Periodic Table, in which he arranged the elements then known in rows and columns to show this regularity, forecasting the discovery of missing elements. This was a convenient way to present the information, but he recognized that it did not fully represent the overall pattern because it broke up the sequence. He thought the ideal would be a cylindrical helix, but that needs three dimensions.
Many chemists before and after Mendeleyev have proposed a spiral image, to get the advantages of a helix in two dimensions. My Chemical Galaxy is the latest of these versions, using a starry pathway to link the elements and to express the astronomical reach of chemistry. The intention is not to replace the familiar table, but to complement it and at the same time to stimulate the imagination and to evoke wonder at the order underlying the universe. |
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