Things You Didn’t Know: Periodic Table

By Matthew Summersgill

The invention of the Periodic Table of Elements, as we know it, is generally credited to the Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleev in 1869.  Throughout the centuries there had been attempts to organize and categorizes elements by the ancient Greeks, the Germans and the English.  But Mr. Mendeleev got it right. Since then it has had a profound effect on not only the discipline of chemistry but other sciences and culture as well.  Here are a few facts about this ubiquitous science classroom tool that you may have missed during your years of schooling:

• It was originally called the Periodic Chaise Lounge but Mendeleev thought that sounded too “bourgeois”

• If you lay the table over a D&D Nellysyr Manor map and your cleric and elf follow the noble gasses you can reach the Level 13 Demonspawn in half the time *Please note: this can only be accomplished with 17 dexterity points.

• One evening in 1985, computer programmer Alexey Pajitnov opened his laboratory door to find five pieces of his newly invented game, Tetris, gangbanging his wall mounted periodic table.

• The table categorizes 8 types of metals: lanthanides, actinides, metalloids, alkali metals, alkaline earth metals, poor metals, transition metals and hair metal.  Alkaline metals are widely regarded to be a “made up” category. You know…as a joke.

• Einsteinium is NOT named after Albert Einstein.  In fact, it is named after a particularly dense scientist named Carl who everyone facetiously called “Einstein”.

• Germanium once invaded Gallium and Aluminum but was defeated when the world discovered it was putting Selenium protons into camps.

• Chemists initially thought that Yttrium’s electron configuration was 2-8-17-9-2.  But then they realized it was actually 2-8-18-9-2.  Wacky bastards.

• Hydrogen spends most of his time alone on the chart.  He likes chat rooms, Japanese anime and in high school he was voted most likely to bring an assault rifle to work.