“The chart periodic will settle
Much chem data known, in fine fettle
And space economic:
Ranked numbers atomic
Yield elements’ proving their mettle.”
The 3 April 2023 limerick provided yet another ode to the Periodic Table of the Elements (PTE), which is undoubtedly my most common disciplinary theme. As with the commonalities in the “start of the month” poems, PTE-related phrases accumulate quickly, so that I sometimes run into a challenge with avoiding rhymes I’ve used before, but this was one where the pun at the end clearly distinguished it from previous work!
“The chart periodic will settle /
Much chem data known, in fine fettle /
And space economic…”
Certainly, the big themes of this poem are also ones I’ve summarized here in essay form previously, and so I hope this post does not seem too redundant.
In 1869, Dmitri Mendeleev published his precursor to the modern Periodic Table of the Elements (PTE). This “chart periodic” was a major step forward for chemists, given its organizational and predictive power. Much had previously been known about specific, individual elements, but such a coordinated presentation, regarding multiple elements at once, was a significant advance.
The PTE communicates a tremendous amount of information (“much chem data known”), effectively and compactly (“in fine fettle and space economic”).
“Ranked numbers atomic /
Yield elements’ proving their mettle.”
Mendeleev’s PTE used atomic weight to order the elements; the modern PTE uses atomic number (the number of protons in an atom of each element), which gives a slightly different order (“rank”). The PTE allows elements to “prove their mettle,” or demonstrate their properties, in a visually convenient way.
This last line also allows for a play on words with the homophones “mettle” and “metal,” because one of the immediate conclusions a chemist can draw from the PTE is whether or not an element is a metal or a non-metal! Elements with metallic character are on the left side of the PTE; elements with non-metallic character are on the right side; and elements with aspects of both metals and non-metals, known as metalloids, form the shape of a “staircase” between these regions on the PTE. The majority of elements on the PTE are metals.
Chemphasis 