Unfolding the Periodic Table

Our starting point is not hidden, nor is it far off. It is not an extreme place like Mono Lake or Freswick Castle, but it is a central concept expressed on a single page. The periodic table is the center of chemistry, and therefore of this book. 

You can spot it at a distance from its vaguely cathedral-Uke shape. You can see the chemical symbols that it contains on magnets and T-shirts and restaurant signs. Its regular columns are not quite symmetric, but that is because it has been twisted out of its natural shape by the contingencies of history. Rearrange it just a httle and a simple mathematical pattern appears. 

To see this pattern, imagine that the periodic table is made out of beads on an abacus, arranged in the familiar U shape. Then push all the beads to the left  

By row, there are 2, 8, 8, 18, and 18 elements. The pattern continues in the rows below, but it is obscured by the fact that on most tables 14 elements have been moved out of the sixth and seventh rows. On the table here I have put them where they belong. These rows have 32 elements each. 

These patterns come out with some origami. There are lines on the figure in the front of the book that show where you can fold to bring blocks together, folding it as 

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The only way scientists know that the Sun is mostly hydrogen is from experiments performed here on Earth. Each element in the periodic table has a distinct signature, called its spectrum. Electrons do not stick to the nuclei in atoms, but surround the core in a fashion that scientists have modeled variously as orbits, clouds, and probability densities. More detail will unfold later in this chapter, but for the moment, the model of an atom to be pictured is that of an electron orbiting the nucleus like the Moon orbits Earth. 

Once the elements are made, they can join together according to chemical rules. With a little more unfolding, we can see why certain atoms pair up, and when they pair up as well. These are the chemical rules that lead to R. J. P. Williams s inevitable chemical order, and the periodic table becomes a map for Earth s development through time. 

Thousands of experiments, run by hundreds of scientists, tell a story that spans billions of years and yet fits onto a single piece of paper, in the form of the periodic table of the elements. This story is painted in the bright colors of the individual elements and the blended shades of complex biochemical molecules. The tape of life unfolds through catastrophic dissonance and resolves with eucatastrophe after inevitable loss. 

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