scrapping the periodic table? a fundamental mistake

The author is a science critic

A3 posters of the Middlesex County Cricket Club fixtures list and the bin lorry timetable hang below the kitchen blackboard. Given the team’s dismal T20 performance this season, this is the only pin-up between the trio that brings any joy.

Admittedly, this is a pullout of the periodic table. The grid, familiar to all schoolchildren, arranges all known elements according to their properties in rows and columns.

Soon, it won’t be as familiar to some people: Education officials in India have confirmed that the periodic table, as well as the topic of evolution, are to be dropped from some school textbooks. The announcement prompted protests by teachers, who fear the omission – intended to streamline a pandemic-disrupted curriculum – will damage India’s reputation for science and technology. The principle of evolution is fundamental to biology – and the periodic table is literally fundamental to our understanding of the world.

Each square in the array represents an element, which is a substance made up of only one type of atom. Each element has its own name, symbol, and unique “atomic number,” which is the number of protons in an atom’s nucleus. An atom of hydrogen, which has the symbol H, has one proton in its nucleus and therefore has an atomic number of one. There are 118 elements, of which at least 92 are known to occur naturally (the rest are mostly lab-created and generally unstable). Four new elements were formally added in 2016.

However, the origins of the periodic table date back to the 1860s. Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleev, building on the work of others, took 63 known elements—including hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, chlorine, and potassium—and ordered them according to a repeating (periodic) pattern in their chemical properties. They also took note of the gaps that they accurately predicted were related to unseen elements.

I’ve always had a soft spot for Mendeleev’s constructions. For the record, I displayed no particular talent for chemistry, achieving a grade B in the subject at A-level – a gratifying twist, given an unfortunate mock practical during which my exam paper accidentally mixed with a Bunsen burner.

That shortcoming, I’m ashamed to say, still catches me out: In 2019, I wrote a column in praise of the periodic table’s 150-year anniversary, only to mix up the atomic number with the mass number. There’s something about chemistry that still makes me think: should try more,

This perhaps explains my fascination with it: To me, a chemistry nerd, the periodic table feels more like a Rosetta Stone that I’ll never really decipher. But I still enjoy this triumph of tabulation: the names, the characters, the history.

The elements are named after places of discovery: berkelium, darmstadium, moscovium and tennessine. There are elements named after people: einsteinium, mendelevium and seaborgium, named after the American chemist Glenn Seaborg, who had a hand in the discovery of the 10 elements. The Meitnerium commemorates Lise Meitner, who really should have won the Nobel; He was nominated about 50 times. Then there are those that sound like props in a Marvel movie: krypton, europium (used in banknotes), promethium, thorium and neptunium (produced as waste from nuclear reactors).

The most recently added elements, created by the collision of smaller elements together, exist only fleetingly before decaying. Chemists are now trying to make elements 119 and 120 in similar ways. If researchers can muster the necessary energy, they could one day reach an “island of stability” filled with heavier but longer-lasting elements.

What an exciting endgame that would be. Give me 120 runs in T20 any day.