Hello everyone, how are you all doing today? It is the start of another beautiful week and I sure hope you are already giving it all you have got, huh? Because that is all it deserves.
Okay, it is about time I spoke about another national holiday. While this holiday has no historical backing or saved major lives, I find it to be very instrumental to many of us. If you went to school and you ever did a job that had anything to do with science, then you would appreciate it today. And that day is none other than National Periodic Table Day.
Now, we all know what the periodic table is, it is those rows and columns filled with letters representing the first 20 elements. I remember those days, we would turn the names of the elements into a song just so we would be able to remember them well in their right order. This was our own method of memorizing and it always worked.
In all aspects of science, the elements are always needed. Whether in their raw form or when they are combined to form compounds. And thanks to the evolution of technology, there is no place on earth you will go that you would not see examples of the first twenty elements.
No wonder they made it compulsory for us back then in school. Now that I think of it, the Periodic Table was instrumental in passing exams. Once you know the Periodic Table by heart as a science student, more than 30% of your exam problems were solved. This was because most exam questions had one thing or the other to do with these elements. And knowing their position in the table, along with their mass and atomic number, you would just sail through the exam in flying colors.
The foundation of the Periodic Table was first laid out by a German Chemist called Johann Dobereiner in the year 1817. He was able to organize the elements into groups of three and that was what formed the basis of modifications by other scientists.
Later on, in the year 1863, an English chemist called John Newlands published the very first Periodic Table and he was also the first scientist to introduce the Law of Octaves.
The National Periodic Table Day was founded by an author, inventor, and chemistry teacher called Mr. David T. Steineker in the year 2016. He founded it as a toast to the day that John Newlands published the first Periodic Table.
So, on this day, you just have to think back to your high school days when you had to tackle those tough science questions that just ceaselessly bugged you, that always seemed like the teachers were working some form of magic. And I want you to remember how you managed to overcome them all. And were you able to memorize the first twenty elements? If so, how? If not, why?
Feel free to drop your comments in the comment section.
Thank you very much for reading, see you in the next post.