Routine Order

PopSci contributing editor Theodore Gray has been fascinated with the Periodic Table of Elements. So much so that he has been spending a few years now collecting real-life samples of the elements, or when that is not available, samples of things that include rare elements.

I read in Oliver Sacks’s Uncle Tungsten that Sacks liked to visit a periodic table at the Kensington Science Museum in London, and I actually thought it was a real table with samples sitting on it for people to look at. Disappointed to learn that it was just a wall display, I resolved that I was going to build a proper periodic-table table.

And so began his journey that ended in it’s current form as an interactive flash periodic table!

How I wish I had this when I was still learning Chemistry…