Today, 23rd October is Mole Day – which might put you in mind of small, furry, burrowing animals. However, they don’t even seem to have a commemorative day of any kind; we’re actually talking about the mole in chemistry, a concept that makes it easier to talk about the amounts of substances involved in chemical reactions. This is a fundamental concept and one that all chemists utilise.
Today’s graphic is one that I’ve been working on over the past couple of weeks. Every chemistry classroom has a Periodic Table, but it’s often a drab affair; considering it’s one of the cornerstones of chemistry, I thought I’d attempt to produce a more dynamic looking version. The result is the above table – each element is shown within a circle that contains a variety of data pertaining to that element.
This graphic looks at several properties of elements in the Periodic Table. These properties show trends, also referred to as ‘periodicity’, as you progress along a period. The emphasis of this graphic is on giving a general impression of each of the trends; although a rough scale is given to the right of each diagram, this is intended to be for approximate reference, rather than allowing the diagrams to be used as precise tools for determining properties of specific elements. Each diagram is also accompanied by a brief explanation of the trends, and a simple explanation of basic anomalies.
This graphic looks at the discovery dates of the elements, as well as the countries in which they were discovered, and plots them all on a timeline to give some idea of the order of discovery. To see a larger view of the image, click the image above to view it full sized.
The final elements infographic looks at the Transactinides. These elements are all synthetically produced, and do not occur naturally; as such their applications are minimal, and their chemistry relatively unknown. Hence this graphic looks more at their general properties, and at some of the scientists after whom a number of the elements are named.
The penultimate elements infographic focuses on the Actinides. Many of these elements don’t occur naturally, and are produced synthetically, with some of them existing only for a fraction of a second before they decay back into lighter elements.