“The Table for chem settings formative /
(With info, analyses normative), /
Routine here oft frequents /
In early-spring sequence: /
Its hist’ry and themes tend exhortative!”
The 3 April 2026 NaPoWriMo limerick focused on my most common theme with these poems: the periodic table.
“The Table for chem settings formative..”
The Periodic Table of the Elements (PTE) is on the wall of nearly any science classroom: any “chem setting formative.”
“(With info, analyses normative…)”
A major objective in Introductory Chemistry is learning to use the PTE as a tool: given a copy of the PTE on an exam, can a student then predict information and analyze useful trends and standards related to the elements?
“Routine here oft frequents /
In early-spring sequence: /
Its hist’ry and themes tend exhortative!”
My NaPoWriMo routine generally lands on the PTE in the early days of each April. It is so integral to chemistry that I tend to return to it often, along with comparably stalwart topics such as the scientific method and balanced reactions.
In my own experience, the periodic table is a ubiquitous symbol for students, but an initially mysterious one.
While its present-tense utility for chemists is difficult to overstate, the stories behind its development are likewise incredibly valuable for all students, given the centrality of observation, pattern recognition, and careful analysis as valuable skills across disciplines. Moreover, sharing this context efficiently communicates some of the complexity of the actual practice of science, beyond what can be typically presented in a textbook. (Even a quick allusion to how Dmitri Mendeleev was one of several scientists interested in periodicity, rather than the sole chemist who proposed the one and only such relationship, can be illustrative.)
It’s been fun both to learn more about the history of the periodic table and to more intentionally share that history in my teaching; increasingly, over the past several years, these themes “tend exhortative” for me.
Chemphasis 