The old periodic table—all blocks and rows—was efficient but inelegant. A bold redesign, to be distributed to schools throughout Britain, aims to convey chemistry’s true majesty and coherence.
P.J. Stewart/www.borndigital.co.uk
A CHEMICAL GALAXY
Philip Stewart, a plant biologist at Oxford University, arranges the elements by atomic number (the number of protons in the atomic nucleus), starting from the galactic center and spiraling outward. Stewart says this structure highlights the relationships between atomic groups and roughly corresponds to the order in which the elements may have formed in the universe.
Neutronium (element zero), a bare neutron, is absent from the standard periodic table. It may have been among the first matter to emerge from the Big Bang and is thought to form in abundance in neutron stars.
Hydrogen, a light gas, was oddly placed above the alkali metals in the old table. Here it sits more appropriately beside carbon, with which it often bonds into hydrocarbons like methane and coal.
Elements in atomic groups behave similarly. Here, the reactive halogens (shown in red), which readily accept electrons, sit opposite the reactive boron group (bright green), which are ready electron donors.
Lanthanides and actinides (in blue) were a blocky footnote to the old schema but fit seamlessly into the new one. Here, elements lutetium (#71) and lawrencium (#103) straddle groups whose properties they share.
Some of the most complex, shortest-lived elements are found only in labs. Several more (“?”) are predicted to exist based on the periodic order of all the elements. Two (#113 and #115) were briefly detected last year—maybe.
