WASHINGTON -- Almost everyone has seen the Periodic Table of the Elements, the chart gracing walls of science classrooms that shows relationships between the chemical elements that make up everything on Earth — and beyond. The American Chemical Society (ACS), the world's largest scientific society, now is offering viewers of its award-winning Bytesize Science series a tour of what may stake a claim to being the world's first and only Periodic Table table.
Put together by Theodore W. Gray, winner of ACS' 2011 James T. Grady-James H. Stack Award for Interpreting Chemistry for the Public, it is a real wooden table with compartments that hold samples of almost every chemical element. The Periodic Table Table video is available at www.BytesizeScience.com.
Gray, an author of several books and a column in Popular Science, opens little doors on the compartments to reveal in the video everything from gold ingots to an iridescent bismuth crystal to a niobium earring and a neon lamp. Pointing out some of the several thousand samples in the table and around his workshop, Gray, co-founder of Wolfram Research, describes ways people encounter the chemical elements in everyday life.
Source: American Chemical Society