Elemental
Is it time to revamp the periodic table?

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Everything I need to know I learned through Googling.

I do wish Stewart's design would eliminate the meaningless galaxy image. It's just noise.

I've posted this before. A collection of periodic tables: Chemogenesis.

It points to another collection of Periodic Table Styles.

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0 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 0 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 0 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 ...

I don't like it. To see some connections you have to follow arrows. The visual link from the grid pattern on the current chart to the filling of electron orbitals is gone.

It won't catch on.

Someone on Slashdot made the same point, and I have to agree with them. Also, the circles representing the elements are made small just so the meaningless but pretty galaxy image isn't obscured. Not good visual design, but perhaps it would be possible to come up with another one that preserves the essence of the concept with a better presentation.

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Everything I need to know I learned through Googling.

Well that would be the next slide of the slideshow after the galaxy one, wouldn't it?

The galaxy image is what Edward Tufte (The Visual Display of Quantitative Information) would call chartjunk, namely a graphic element that distracts the viewer from what is really important in the graph or visualization. The old version of the spiral shown on the next slide of the show is superior to the "pretty picutre" in all ways, but I personally don't see it as superior to the traditional layout. Call me old-fashioned I guess. :wink:

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"I often say that when you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind." - William Thompson, 1st Baron Lord Kelvin

"If it was so, it might be, and if it were so, it would be, but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic!" - Tweedledee

This isn't right. This isn't even wrong. - Wolfgang Pauli

You nailed it. More crud from the viewgraph/powerpoint generation.

The book The Periodic Kingdom shows a nice alternate 3D model that shows relationships better.

The superatoms/superchemistry genre may need a chart of its own one day.