Periodic Devotions

The arrival of my favorite songbird signals the end of winter and the promise that spring is on the way. As a little girl, I desperately wanted to hold one. Its bright red breast and soft feathers made it look so cute! I just couldn’t understand why it wouldn’t let me. No matter how close…

Let’s conduct a hypothetical chemistry experiment. (It will be fun. I promise.) Let’s take a silver spoon — a fancy one made of real silver — and set it out on the counter. And now? Well, actually that’s it. Now we wait. Imagine we wait a whole year before taking another look at that silver…

I’m about to introduce a controversial question. It’s one with the power to divide on a level the likes of political parties and pineapple on pizza. You ready? Should the pumpkin spice latte, PSL for short, be released before Labor Day? Let the debate rage! Go ahead. Come together and take your stand. Form groups.…

Iron The chemical symbol for Iron on the Periodic Table is Fe. It comes from the Latin word for iron, ferrum. Iron is extremely important for humans. One could even say it is central to life. Literally. Two examples: What is at the center matters. “Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the…

Neon Neon is one of the Noble gases located in the far-right column of the Periodic Table What do you think of when you think of neon? Many of us think of a bright, lit up neon sign. And this is true! Neon is used in the advertising industry to create signs that light up…

Carbon A lot can be said about it.  Pure carbon takes on a few different forms. Let’s look at two. Graphite versus Diamond Both, believe it or not, are composed of pure carbon. The difference is in the way the carbon atoms are arranged. Graphite carbon atoms are arranged in layers making it soft and…

Zinc The element that protects. Let’s count some of the ways… I like that last one. What a word. Galvanize. And it’s actually a word unique to zinc. While we sometimes use it to mean “stimulate” or “excite,” the second definition according to Merriam Webster is extremely specific. Galvanize means to immerse in molten zinc…

Yttrium Never heard of it? Most haven’t. It’s a slivery metallic rare earth metal located in the middle portion of the Periodic Table. It’s not very common on earth — mostly mixed in with other elements and minerals in rocks. But Yittrium does have one fun fact. It was present in moon rock samples that…

Aluminum. Soft and malleable. Lightweight. Low density. Difficult and expensive to mine. With descriptions such as these, it would seem highly unlikely for such an element to be of much use. And yet, it is one of the most used metals in the Periodic Table! What at first glance may appear unlikely, is powerful and…

All the elements in The Periodic Table are made up of atoms. For most of the 19th century, it was thought that atoms were the smallest and most basic building blocks of all matter. And in a sense that is true — each element is made up of one kind of atom. For example, hydrogen…

As I was contemplating what to write for this post, my eyes landed on a banana on my kitchen counter. My first thought? Why is it yellow? Not, what is the chemical reason that bananas turn yellow but, why, out of all the colors in the world is a banana yellow? And then that got…

Hydrogen. The first element of the Periodic Table. Which means it must be pretty fancy and complicated stuff, right? Wrong. Hydrogen isn’t first because it is complicated. Hydrogen is first because it is the simplest. Hydrogen has the simplest formula of all the elements. Each atom of hydrogen contains only one proton and one electron.…

Question: Why does the Periodic Table look the way it does? Why aren’t the rows even? Why are some columns higher than others? I’m glad you asked. A long time ago… (1869 to be exact), in a galaxy not so far away… (technically it was Siberia. Which is a region in Russia. Which is on…