“Returning to Table: tradition
To celebrate in rhymed rendition,
Artistic chem-sorter.
The elements’ order;
Ranked properties— note from positions!”
The 3 April 2024 Twitter limerick celebrated a common early theme from these National Poetry Writing Month (NaPoWriMo) routines: the Periodic Table of the Elements. As the title notes, it was thus the “table’s turn” for a poetic highlight.
“Returning to Table: tradition /
To celebrate in rhymed rendition…”
The Periodic Table of the Elements (PTE) is one of my favorite topics for an early limerick in this annual series. As a common sight in science classrooms, it is a more accessible topic than many chemistry vocabulary terms that might subsequently be poetically celebrated later in the month. The story behind Dmitri Mendeleev’s insight in developing the precursor to the modern PTE is both compelling and relatively novel for many audiences.
These general aspects combine to make the PTE a likely subject to celebrate early on in this “tradition,” via “rhymed rendition.”
“Artistic chem-sorter.”
Sam Kean’s book The Disappearing Spoon includes an interesting approach to the PTE that I’ve occasionally noted in teaching: simply examining its shape. He writes, “Before introducing the periodic table, every teacher should just strip away all the clutter and have students just stare at the thing, blank. What does it look like?”
Considering the appearance of the PTE acknowledges its distinctive image as an “artistic chem-sorter.”
“The elements’ order; /
Ranked properties— note from positions!”
Why is the periodic table posted so widely in science classrooms? It orients an enormous amount of chemistry-pertinent information within a compact space.
By examining the order of elements on the PTE, a chemist can determine atomic number (number of protons), bonding behavior (via number of valence electrons), etc. Likewise, as celebrated in the last line, by comparing the relative placement of two elements on the periodic table, a chemist can explain several qualitative trends between them: Which element has a larger atomic radius? Which element is more electronegative? The “ranked properties” can be “note[d] from positions.”
Chemphasis 