doi.org/10.26434/chemrxiv.7635905.v1 The Periodic Table as a Cultural Meme Edwin Constablke Submitted date: 26/01/2019 • Posted date: 28/01/2019 Licence: CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 Citation information: Constablke, Edwin (2019): The Periodic Table as a Cultural Meme. ChemRxiv. Preprint. The Mendeleev periodic table is 150 years old this year. This article looks at how it has changed in its history and its wider recognition in human society. File list (1) download file view on ChemRxiv The periodic table as a cultural meme.pdf (2.44 MiB)
Transcript
doi.org/10.26434/chemrxiv.7635905.v1
The Periodic Table as a Cultural MemeEdwin Constablke
Submitted date: 26/01/2019 • Posted date: 28/01/2019Licence: CC BY-NC-ND 4.0Citation information: Constablke, Edwin (2019): The Periodic Table as a Cultural Meme. ChemRxiv. Preprint.
The Mendeleev periodic table is 150 years old this year. This article looks at how it has changed in its historyand its wider recognition in human society.
File list (1)
download fileview on ChemRxivThe periodic table as a cultural meme.pdf (2.44 MiB)
Abstract: The Mendeleev periodic table is 150 years old this year. This article looks at how it has changed in its history and its wider recognition in human society.
Keywords: Periodic table · perception of science · chemical education · Dmitri Mendeleev
The tragedy of our discipline is that many people know of chemistry, but far fewer know about it. Nevertheless, there
are a number of iconic images from chemistry which are almost universally recognized: the double-helical structure of
duplex DNA, the football of buckminsterfullerene and the periodic table (Fig. 1). To mark the 150th anniversary of the
introduction of the Mendeleev periodic table, UNESCO has designated 2019 as the International Year of the Periodic
Table. A meme is a cultural reference passed between individuals by imitation or other non-genetic means – the periodic
table is a prime example.
Fig. 1. The modern medium form of the periodic table (https://iupac.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/IUPAC_Periodic_Table-
01Dec18.jpg)
What is this tool, which is fundamental to science, and which has achieved such a broad recognition and
acceptance? Today, almost every area of human activity has been encapsulated in the characteristic rows and columns
of the table. There are periodic tables of fruit, beer, vegetables, feminist pornography, A Game of Thrones, and politics,
to name but a few [1]. It has even been set to music by Tom Lehrer [2], and at the fourth review conference of the
Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, the sesquicentennial was marked by the release of a periodic
table of States Parties to the Chemical Weapons Convention [3].
However, we should not think of the periodic table as a static object: today's table has 18% more elements in
it than when I was born in 1955! The shape that we instantly recognize has evolved with time and many alternatives to
the modern form have been proposed. We are most familiar with the medium length representation (Fig. 1), in which
the lanthanoids and actinoids are extracted and placed under the main blocks containing elements of groups 1 to 18, but
it is arguable that Dmitri Mendeleev would not recognize this version of his own creation.
As so often happens in science, the time was right in the 1860's for the discovery of the periodic table. Some
70 years earlier, Antoine Lavoisier had brought clarity to the chemical community with his modern definitions of
elements and compounds [4], and in the intervening years multiple attempts were made to recognize patterns for the
2
organization of the elements. In parallel, concepts of valence were being developed which served to intensify the
perceived relationships between certain elements. As early as 1817, Johann Döbereiner recognized that for groups of
three elements with similar chemical properties, such as calcium, strontium and barium, the atomic weight of the middle
element was close to the arithmetic mean of the atomic weights of the first and third elements [5]. However, it was not
until the 1860’s that the modern periodic table ordering the (then known) elements began to appear. Probably, the
earliest of these modern representations was from William Odling, who in 1864 published a vertical listing of elements
almost identical to that which Mendeleev presented in 1869 [6]. In 1865, John Newlands, also arranged elements in
order of their atomic weights and noted that “the eighth element, starting from a given one, is a kind of repetition of the
first, like the eighth note in an octave of music” (Fig. 2) [7].
Fig. 2. The Newlands periodic table from 1865 [7].
However, the near simultaneous independent publications from Dmitri Mendeleev (Fig. 3) [8] and J. Lothar Meyer (Fig.
4) [9] in 1869 established the periodic table in the chemical firmament. Like Newlands, both Meyer and Mendeleev
arranged the elements in vertical order of increasing atomic weight, rather than the more familiar form with a horizontal
organization. Both Meyer and Mendeleev identified vacancies in the periodic system for elements that had not yet been
discovered, although these were more explicitly included in the Mendeleev version. It is this latter innovation which
has linked the name Mendeleev with the discovery of the periodic table – it was not just a book-keeping exercise, but a
chemical tool.
Fig. 3. The Mendeleev periodic table from 1869 [8].
Although the periodic table was initially regarded with some skepticism, the success in predicting the properties of
subsequently discovered elements led to its widespread acceptance. Both Meyer and Mendeleev included versions of
the periodic table in their own chemistry books, and by 1895 it was to be found generally in chemistry text books. By
1871, Mendeleev had transformed his table from the vertical structure to the more familiar horizontal form.
In subsequent years, missing elements were discovered and incorporated into the periodic table, with the only
major revisions to the form being the addition of the noble gases and the identification of the lanthanoids and actinoids
3
as an “inner transition series”. The noble gases were originally identified as a new group 0 by Brauner and placed at the
left hand side of his periodic table of 1902 [10] but by 1904 Ramsay renamed them as group 8 and moved them to the
right hand side, where they remain today [11]. The final major revision of the periodic table came in 1945, when Glenn
Seaborg recognized that the transuranium elements, many of which were isolated in the research programs into atomic
weapons, belonged to a new series which he called the actinides (now actinoids) which he placed under the lanthanoids
in the periodic table [12]. The description and numbering of the groups within the periodic table differed in Europe and
the United States and was standardized with the use of of the descriptors groups 1–18 in the IUPAC recommendations
for nomenclature in 1990 [13].
Fig. 4. The Meyer periodic table from 1870 [9].
For a chemist, the meaning of the periodic table is clear. It links fundamental atomic properties such as the
atomic number and the number of valence electrons in such a way that we may see a commonness and a continuity in
chemical properties. As teachers of chemistry, we use the periodic table to emphasize trends in chemical properties as
we go across a period or down a group. The increase in electropositive character from lithium to caesium, the lanthanoid
contraction and the change from non-metal to metal on passing from carbon to lead are all phenomena that we
didactically link to the periodic table.
Why has this organizational system from chemistry found such a wide and diverse recognition and acceptance
outside the scientific community? On the one hand, the simplicity and clarity of presentation in horizontal and vertical
arrays appeals to our sense of order. In the same way that the periodic table emerged from chemists searching for some
structure and organization within the elements, so man seeks for tools to understand his environment. The simplicity of
the periodic structure for grouping and rationalizing diverse facts is very seductive!
These observations lead us to think that the universal recognition of the periodic table has in many cases more
to do with its shape than its content. Indeed, the semiotics and symbolism of the periodic table is an active area of study
outside the mainstream of chemistry [14].
4
Fig. 5. The Benfey periodic table from 1964 [15].
Apart from the plethora of periodic tables to be found on the internet depicting all manner of objects, there is
also much serious study of the history and meaning of the periodic table. The evolution of the periodic table over time
and the plethora of different forms (for example, the spiral form proposed by Benfey in 1964, Fig. 5) for the
representation of the arrangement of the chemical elements that have been proposed is a discipline of study in itself
