The periodic table is perhaps the most recognizable icon of chemistry, hanging in almost every science classroom, reminding us of our desire, from the earliest times, to find patterns and organize the building blocks that make up the world around us. As we celebrate the “International Year of the Periodic Table” marking 150 years of efforts by Mendeleev (and others) to try to neatly arrange the elements into the familiar patterns of groups and periods to make up the modern periodic table, let’s go on a historical journey and see how we arrived at today’s periodic table. It is not just chemistry, but inputs from astronomy to nuclear physics that have, over the years, helped us understand the elements that the universe is made up of. The periodic table is not only a symbol of chemistry but one of the great unifiers of science.
(There’ll be a chance to see samples of several pure elements that are not so commonly found in labs – from Gd and Ru to Pd and Lu!)
