Periodic Tables

The cover article in Science News this week (unfortunately not online, but see this writeup in the Guardian) is about a geologist’s redesign of the periodic table of elements, that graphic beloved of chemists. The geologist, Bruce Railsback, set out to redesign the periodic table so that it would be more useful for earth scientists, who deal with elements mostly in their ionic forms. In his table, elements are arranged according to their ions, rather than their neutral atoms, and some elements may have multiple entries in the table if they have several different commonly found ions (e.g. an entry both for ferrous (Fe2+) and ferric (Fe3+) iron).

It’s a pretty amazing graphic (downloadable from here) and I’m tempted to print it out on the large-format plotter at work. It might even lead me to read up on some geochemistry. My chemistry is quite rusty, but there’s something archetypal in studying about elements, their forms, and the earth.