A Fresh Look at the Periodic Table

Define:

A new periodic table that can aid people in understanding the concepts and offering an overall easier design to comprehend. This could help people learning about the elements and help memorization of their unique properties when using the categories that we can make.

Discover:

Some questions that popped up:

  • Why is hydrogen alone and on both sides?
  • Why are family/groups important?
  • How could we change the periodic table so that it’s easier to understand?
  • What creative design elements could we introduce?
  • How could this table help people? How could it be useful?
  • What are the different ways we can represent the periodic table for it to be interesting and appealing? What do we need to change from its original design? What do we need to keep?
  • What are the unique touches of detail that we could add to the periodic table?
Dream:

The periodic table gives you which family the element belongs to, how many protons, neutrons, and electrons are in each atom, what row the element is in, the atomic number and if it’s non-metal, a metalloid or a metal.

What we can alter:

  • We can color a bit of them depending on what their state of matter is (solid, gas or liquid.)
  • We can color them differently based on their family groups (metals, metalloids, non-metals, lanthanide, alkaline)
  • Block-like shapes could be used as it doesn’t complicate things as much.
  • Color coding by families, putting a little space in each element (or outlining) depending on states of matter.
Design:
  • We decided to get rid of the large space in the middle for a big physical change.
  • Since we were technically messing with the groups, we thought of adding an extra slab of paper demonstrating how many electrons each element has to make up for the missing groups. (We ended up scrapping this idea because of the little time that we had.)
  • We also added different symbols, outline colors and colors to sort our elements into groups such as noble gasses, halogens, non-metals, alkaline earth metals and more.
Deliver:

The biggest physical change we made was getting rid of the big space in the periodic table. We chose this to make the periodic table smaller so it would be easier to really see how many elements we had. We also got rid of the space between the lanthanide and actinide series and adding them to the bottom of the periodic table, but still excluding them from the periods.

We kept in periods so that you could still keep an aspect of how scientists sorted the elements. All of us created a legend as we color-coded the periodic table in many groups. The legend explains how to find all of the families and subgroups. We colored them inside depending if they were metal, non-metal or metalloid. Then, we colored a bit of the square to indicate its state of matter. (Solid, liquid or gas.) You can see we also outlined them depending on their families. (Transition metals, Halogens, Noble gases, Alkali Metals, and Alkaline Earth metals.) We also included the atomic mass, the atomic number, and the elements’ full name. The final thing we did was the two symbols that separate the lanthanides and actinides.

Debrief:

In general, I think our project is pretty good. I think that this periodic table could help students recognize certain families and certain subgroups inside the periodic table. With some of them being colored in, this could help differentiate the elements and they can be easily found.

We could’ve made a more creative physical change and made it more of a bigger shape, more creative shape. We got rid of the large space in the periodic table, but we could’ve played around more with different shapes we could’ve made with the elements that we had in front of us.

We could’ve also included the amounts of certain things in atoms, but due to the limited time, the person that was assigned to that couldn’t complete the task.

One comment

  1. Mr. Robinson · March 10, 2020 at 3:57 pm ·

    Thanks for your explanation of how you used the solution fluency to re-imagine the periodic table. Great work including media showing what your periodic table looks like. Don’t forget that the gaps in the periodic table are important. I see some reflection on the process. How do you think your redesigned periodic table can help Science students understand the elements better?