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Speaker 3: On Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast Josh, And there's Chuck
Speaker 2: and Jerry's here too. And this is the We'll get
Speaker 2: through it edition of Stuff you Should Know about the
Speaker 2: periodic teaple.
Speaker 1: Uh huh. I have other names for it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'll bet you do. Can you say any of them.
Speaker 1: This is the only time I hate my job. Edition.
Speaker 1: This is the uh. Now we can stop talking about
Speaker 1: the sun episode maybe edition uh? And this is the
Speaker 1: My god, why do we ever do episodes on chemistry? Edition?
Speaker 1: I failed chemistry. It's the only thing I've ever failed
Speaker 1: was chemistry.
Speaker 2: I don't think I even ever took chemistry. To tell
Speaker 2: you the.
Speaker 1: Truth, Hey, he didn't fail it, right, I fail if
Speaker 1: you don't try.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's my motto. Here's what I figured out about this,
Speaker 2: like driving myself mad trying to learn this stuff and
Speaker 2: understand it. There is a lot of people out there
Speaker 2: who have written articles and explainers on the stuff that
Speaker 2: we're going to talk about, who literally don't know what
Speaker 2: they're talking about, and yet they're presenting their information like
Speaker 2: they do and it's wrong and you can't understand it,
Speaker 2: or in cases where you can't understand it, it still
Speaker 2: doesn't fully answer the question. There's a lot of stuff
Speaker 2: out there like that on this especially as it gets
Speaker 2: more and more like ourcane.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: There's a whole group of people out there, chemists, molecular chemists,
Speaker 2: physicists who understand this, but you can put them all
Speaker 2: together and they can't coherently explain any of it to
Speaker 2: anybody else. They can just talk to one another like
Speaker 2: this where we are where us and everybody listening to
Speaker 2: this episode right now is stuck in the middle. We
Speaker 2: know enough that we can notice when somebody is wrong
Speaker 2: or not correct or doesn't know what they're talking about,
Speaker 2: but we don't know enough to understand what the actual
Speaker 2: scientists are saying and then come back and explain it. So,
Speaker 2: first of all, Breton cap off to Olivia for helping
Speaker 2: us with this one.
Speaker 1: Boy, Olivia should get a bonus for this one, quite
Speaker 1: frank for sure.
Speaker 2: And then second we might have to edit that out
Speaker 2: lot's rack the budget. Secondly, we can we're smart enough
Speaker 2: to get all this across. We are, but we're also
Speaker 2: transparent enough to admit when we're like, we don't understand
Speaker 2: this part.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean there's a few parts I still don't get.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 1: I imagine The good news is I imagine that maybe about
Speaker 1: twenty percent of our listenership is even hearing this right now.
Speaker 2: I hope more than that, because it's really interesting stuff.
Speaker 1: Would you click on something called how the periodic table works?
Speaker 2: Well, we're gonna have to come up with something else.
Speaker 2: I think we'll call this one legs, legs, legs.
Speaker 1: Colin tiny lettering, periodic table exactly the sex episode.
Speaker 2: Right. Well, see, we'll trick them into listening to it.
Speaker 1: All right, I know I can get some of this
Speaker 1: at the beginning, So if you'll allow me to talk
Speaker 1: about one of the only parts I understand, sure, all right, great,
Speaker 1: I'll kick it off because we have to set the
Speaker 1: stage sort of for pre periodic table construction, which is
Speaker 1: to say that early I'm sorry, late in the eighteenth century,
Speaker 1: we were working from sciences, working from the arist Totolian Aristotelian. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's to say Aristotle system, which is which we've talked
Speaker 1: about some recently, which is, hey, we got four elements fire, earth, water,
Speaker 1: and air. And then after that science became a little
Speaker 1: more nuanced, and they're like, hey, actually we think there
Speaker 1: are more things out there, more building blocks. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: maybe we can distinguish them from one another and categorize them,
Speaker 1: maybe based on their mass. And this was sort of
Speaker 1: the scene when in eighteen oh four a oddly English
Speaker 1: school teacher who was also a researcher named John Dalton said,
Speaker 1: all right, things are made up of smaller things maybe these,
Speaker 1: which is not new like for you know, ancient cultures.
Speaker 1: We're even talking about things being up of smaller things.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we talked about democritis in that episode, about things
Speaker 2: we believe before the scientific method.
Speaker 1: Totally. That's exactly where it was. He said things are
Speaker 1: made up maybe of like these little tiny, indestructible, indivisible atoms.
Speaker 1: He got a lot of that wrong, but one thing
Speaker 1: he got right was the idea that no, two elements
Speaker 1: that we know about so far, which were not very
Speaker 1: many at all at that point, can have an identical
Speaker 1: mass and all the atoms of that element have the
Speaker 1: same mass, which also wasn't quite right, but at the
Speaker 1: time it was right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because you got to give it up to these guys.
Speaker 2: When we're like analyzing elements and atoms and stuff today
Speaker 2: we're using like spectrometry and particle accelerators and doing all
Speaker 2: sorts of amazing stuff. These guys are like burning things,
Speaker 2: this is eighteen o four, boiling them in acid. Yeah,
Speaker 2: Like they were doing all the stuff that a high
Speaker 2: school chemistry teacher does to demonstrate chemistry. That's what they
Speaker 2: were doing to actually isolate elements and like weigh them.
Speaker 2: They were weighing things like oxygen. Like they figured out
Speaker 2: that if you take a leader of oxygen, you will
Speaker 2: find that it weighs one point five grams. No matter
Speaker 2: where in the world you weigh it, it's going to
Speaker 2: weigh one point five grams. Like that's what these people
Speaker 2: were doing. Can you capture a leader of oxygen? I
Speaker 2: can't know. I mean, like what they were doing was
Speaker 2: the hardcore like bloody up, like roll up your sleeves
Speaker 2: kind of chemistry. Like apparently it was like one of
Speaker 2: the biggest scientific pushes of the nineteenth century was identifying elements,
Speaker 2: and John Dalton was the first to say, Hey, some
Speaker 2: of these I think we can kind of like try
Speaker 2: to organize them a little bit. And Dalton didn't discover
Speaker 2: any elements, from what I understand, he was just the
Speaker 2: first one to come up with atomic theory in the
Speaker 2: modern age and try to start ordering them based on
Speaker 2: atomic weight.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. It wasn't quite the periodic table yet, but
Speaker 1: it was a precursor foresure. And his very first version
Speaker 1: in eighteen oh three only had the five elements that
Speaker 1: we knew about at the time hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, carbon,
Speaker 1: and sulfur, nitrogen, was known as I think we said
Speaker 1: this in another episode the Azote or is it a zote?
Speaker 1: I guess okay Azot. His second list, just five years later,
Speaker 1: was up to twenty elements, and then twenty four years later,
Speaker 1: by eighteen twenty seven, that list was up to thirty six.
Speaker 1: And as science was progressing, they started noticing patterns, and
Speaker 1: they started noticing sort of intervals where things would repeat themselves,
Speaker 1: such that all of a sudden, A German chemist named
Speaker 1: Ahn Wolfgong in eighteen twenty nine said, well, wait a minute,
Speaker 1: we're noticing these patterns, and some of these things are
Speaker 1: the same, Like if you look at lithium, sodium, potassium,
Speaker 1: they have very similar properties and we might can group
Speaker 1: those together, and those three in the modern periodic table
Speaker 1: are grouped together in the same column. So he was
Speaker 1: right on the money as far as that idea.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I mean, we as humans are obsessed with
Speaker 2: finding patterns and things, and like discovering a latent pattern
Speaker 2: in nature. I mean, there's few things more exciting than that.
Speaker 2: So these guys were looking for patterns even in places
Speaker 2: where they didn't necessarily exist, maybe maneuvering things where they
Speaker 2: should or shouldn't be. Some people took some cracks at
Speaker 2: it to try to to try to kind of organize
Speaker 2: these elements by pattern, but they ran into some problems.
Speaker 2: One was the chemistry wasn't as exact as it needed
Speaker 2: to be to really organize stuff. There were elements that
Speaker 2: hadn't been discovered yet, so there are big missing chunks,
Speaker 2: but they didn't necessarily know they're big missing chunks. But
Speaker 2: they were on the right track that you could order
Speaker 2: these things one way or another, and when you did,
Speaker 2: they would start showing patterns periodicity. Periodic table means that
Speaker 2: there are periods or patterns that repeat themselves depending on
Speaker 2: how you organize these elements.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and the modern periodic table that we know and loathe, Sorry,
Speaker 1: I loath that thing that they pull down in science class,
Speaker 1: that you know teenagers just blankly stare at, not knowing
Speaker 1: what the heck they're looking at. But it's pretty sure
Speaker 1: if you say so. We owe that to a Russian
Speaker 1: chemist named Dmitri Mendelev. And Mendelev in eighteen sixty nine
Speaker 1: was working on the very first Russian language organic chemistry
Speaker 1: textbook in eighteen sixty nine and said, you know what
Speaker 1: we have sixty three three elements. At this point, I
Speaker 1: think we can organize these, and he did so he
Speaker 1: arranged things in columns. He had to reorder some things
Speaker 1: from the previous order. So he's like, maybe we shouldn't
Speaker 1: organize just by atomic mass, maybe we should order them
Speaker 1: into these similarities and how they behave. And the big,
Speaker 1: big thing that Mendelev landed on was leaving gaps where
Speaker 1: he saw gaps and instead of just you know, buttoning
Speaker 1: it up and making it look a certain way, he said,
Speaker 1: I'm going to leave a gap here. And this is
Speaker 1: actually what kind of proved his worth in the fact
Speaker 1: that he was really on the right track, because in
Speaker 1: the fifteen years following him leaving those gaps, three elements
Speaker 1: were discovered that fit those very gaps that he had
Speaker 1: left perfectly, like a little puzzle piece.
Speaker 2: It's like the molecular chemistry version of Babe Ruth calling
Speaker 2: a shot. Yeah, basically essentially, So like when it turned
Speaker 2: out in the next fifteen years, they found those elements
Speaker 2: that did not only fill those spots, but they had
Speaker 2: properties that Mendeleev predicted they would like. He was like,
Speaker 2: they were like, you did, really good guy. He also
Speaker 2: predicted some other ones that didn't come true, but everybody
Speaker 2: was just like, whatever, it's fine. So that was like
Speaker 2: the model that everybody used from that point on, and
Speaker 2: it's the classic model that we see today, where it's
Speaker 2: kind of like a castle with turrets on either side,
Speaker 2: and you know the brick in the middle, and then
Speaker 2: there's like a couple of rows below that are a
Speaker 2: mote if you squint hard enough. Yeah, that's Mendeleev who
Speaker 2: came up with that whole thing. And the way that
Speaker 2: they're arranged is not by atomic mass but by atomic number.
Speaker 2: That's why if you look, and we should probably say,
Speaker 2: the way you read the periodic table is from left
Speaker 2: to right and top to bottom right. So the whole
Speaker 2: thing starts in the top left with number one hydrogen.
Speaker 2: And the reason it's number one is because it has
Speaker 2: one that's right, it has one proton, chuck, and because
Speaker 2: there's one proton in its stable format, has one electron
Speaker 2: and all that's going to be important in a minute.
Speaker 1: That's right, I mean, sure, we go ahead and take
Speaker 1: a break. I feel like that was kind of good
Speaker 1: setup material. Sure, all right, we'll take a break and
Speaker 1: we'll be right back with more things to enlighten you
Speaker 1: and numb you. All right, So the modern periodic table,
Speaker 1: I think where was mendelev He had sixty three on
Speaker 1: his first Yeah, sixty three known elements at the time
Speaker 1: on his first stab. The modern periodic table right now
Speaker 1: stands at one hundred and eighteen, and I think they've
Speaker 1: already said they think possibly may be one day it
Speaker 1: may top out at one seventy three. We'll see, we'll see.
Speaker 1: But that's sort of you know, the thinking, the logic.
Speaker 1: But right now we're at one hundred and eighteen elements
Speaker 1: that we know about. It includes on the chart the
Speaker 1: name of the element. They're usually a one or two
Speaker 1: letter symbol, which is almost always short for the name.
Speaker 1: But in a case of gold, like when you see
Speaker 1: au for gold and you're like, what the heck is
Speaker 1: that all about? That just means it's based on the
Speaker 1: original Latin for gold rum. And they are placed, like
Speaker 1: you said before, the break, in order of their atomic number,
Speaker 1: which represents the protons in each atom, and that is
Speaker 1: what makes that each element unique. Over those seven rows
Speaker 1: aka periods, and eighteen numbered columns aka groups.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so the rows across horizontally, those are the periods
Speaker 2: and Like you said, it's really important to remember. If
Speaker 2: you take a proton and add it to an element,
Speaker 2: you don't have like a variation on the element. You
Speaker 2: have an entirely new element. Everything else you can mess
Speaker 2: around with fudge, mess with the neutrons, mess with the electrons.
Speaker 2: If you add a proton or take away proton, you
Speaker 2: got a totally different element, which is why you can
Speaker 2: order them by their atomic number number one with hydrogen
Speaker 2: number two, helium which has two protons, and so on
Speaker 2: and so forth. When you see that little number in
Speaker 2: the top left of the square for that element, that's
Speaker 2: how many protons it has. But again, as we'll see,
Speaker 2: if we're talking about on the periodic table, stable atoms,
Speaker 2: that means that they don't have an electric charge. They're neutral,
Speaker 2: and that means that they have an even number of
Speaker 2: protons and electrons. Protons are positively charged, electrons are negatively charged,
Speaker 2: and if you have one in one, they cancel each
Speaker 2: other off, two and two they cancel each other off,
Speaker 2: or at the very least they make the electric charge neutral.
Speaker 1: All right, So if you're looking, if you've brought up
Speaker 1: a picture by now of the periodic table, because you
Speaker 1: really want to follow along.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a good evolve.
Speaker 1: God bless you for doing such a thing. And secondly
Speaker 1: you might say, well, wait a minute, chuck, what are
Speaker 1: those what's that thing underneath everything? We will get to
Speaker 1: this in a minute. But those fourteen short columns underneath
Speaker 1: is called the F block, and those are the seventh
Speaker 1: and eighth periods aka rows that are detached and those
Speaker 1: are unnumbered rows, whereas the other rows are numbered through eighteen.
Speaker 1: So put a pin in the F block all elements
Speaker 1: within a period, and again that is the row. If
Speaker 1: you're looking horizontal, all the elements on each row have
Speaker 1: the same number of electron shells. And when you think
Speaker 1: about that in your mind's eye, you're probably picturing how
Speaker 1: we think of that in our mind's eye because of
Speaker 1: chemistry class and science class, which is, you know, a
Speaker 1: circle around in atom's nucleus that holds electrons.
Speaker 2: Right like in orbit. That's Neil's Boor's contribution, although he
Speaker 2: made plenty of contributions, but the whole idea that we
Speaker 2: have of the atom being consisting of like a nucleus
Speaker 2: that's kind of like the sun and electrons orbit orbiting
Speaker 2: around it like planets. That's thanks to Neil's bore and
Speaker 2: the actual orbit. Let's say you have just one circle
Speaker 2: around the nucleus. That's a shell. It's one shell, at
Speaker 2: another one that's the second shell, at another one that's
Speaker 2: the third shell, and they actually fill up in order.
Speaker 2: So when you follow along across the rows, the horizontal
Speaker 2: rows called periods on the periodic table, all of those
Speaker 2: in that row have the same number of shells one shell,
Speaker 2: and the second shell, and the third shell and the
Speaker 2: fourth shell. And as you go down, each row has
Speaker 2: the all the shells that the ones above it had,
Speaker 2: and now they've added another shell because their other shells
Speaker 2: are full of electrons.
Speaker 1: Right, So if you look at periodic table, get out
Speaker 1: your little picture and you look at that first row
Speaker 1: or period, that means it just has one shell capable
Speaker 1: of holding up to two electrons, and so that's why
Speaker 1: there are only two elements there. Hydrogen usually has one
Speaker 1: electron and helium, which normally has two. And then you
Speaker 1: go down from there, the second and third shells can
Speaker 1: hold up to eight electrons. So those second and third
Speaker 1: rows are each going to have eight elements, and so on.
Speaker 1: For the fourth and fifth it's eighteen. The sixth and
Speaker 1: seventh hold thirty two, and so there are thirty two
Speaker 1: elements on the six and seventh rows.
Speaker 2: Just to demonstrate a little further, so helium has two
Speaker 2: electrons in that one shell. Helium's full. The first element
Speaker 2: on the next row that has a second shell, that's lithium.
Speaker 2: Lithium has two electrons in its first shell that's full,
Speaker 2: but it has an extra electron. So now it's added
Speaker 2: another shell the second shelf to how's that first electron?
Speaker 2: And you go all the way down to the very
Speaker 2: end of that row that lithium starts, and you find neon.
Speaker 2: Neon has ten. Its first shell of two is full
Speaker 2: of electrons. It's second shell they can hold up to
Speaker 2: eight is full, so it has ten total electrons. This
Speaker 2: is what the periods are showing us the number of shells,
Speaker 2: and then eventually in a second will know the number
Speaker 2: of electrons that can fill those shells.
Speaker 1: That's right, And the periods of the rose. We're going
Speaker 1: to say that a thousand times. Groups are columns, periods
Speaker 1: are rows. Because if there's one takeaway from this whole thing,
Speaker 1: you can at least look smart. And when you walk
Speaker 1: into a room with a periodic table chart and say
Speaker 1: and someone says, what are those rows and columns? And
Speaker 1: you can say, do you mean groups and periods?
Speaker 2: Yeah? And then really quickly after that, look at you're
Speaker 2: watching and be like, look at the time. I'm late,
Speaker 2: and run out of the room so that there's no
Speaker 2: follow up questions.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and make a U shaped hole in the wall,
Speaker 1: not the letter you, but a YOU shaped Yeah. Nice,
Speaker 1: did that come through?
Speaker 2: Sure it did once you spell it.
Speaker 1: The groups are what we're going to talk about next,
Speaker 1: and those are the columns. And this is where Mendelev
Speaker 1: realized these patterns were coming into play. And once you know,
Speaker 1: sub atomic theory came about and we started being able
Speaker 1: to drill down further and further, we started to be
Speaker 1: able to get way more specific. Yeah. So these patterns
Speaker 1: in these rhythms on the columns are based on the
Speaker 1: number of valence electrons for each element, which means how
Speaker 1: many electrons you would normally find in that outermost shell.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And the outermost shell is important, Chuck, because that's
Speaker 2: where all the action happens. That's when atoms bond together
Speaker 2: to make new molecules. That's where the attraction or repulsion
Speaker 2: happens like that is the that's the active shell. All
Speaker 2: the other shells are full. And when a shell is full,
Speaker 2: it's basically content. It just wants to sit there. It
Speaker 2: wants to be left alone. But if that outermost shell
Speaker 2: isn't full, then it's ready for some action. It's got
Speaker 2: its leather jacket on, it's got its dice in its pocket,
Speaker 2: may be a switchblade, and it's looking for trouble. Yeah,
Speaker 2: so more than more than I think even rows, Like
Speaker 2: all of the elements that are in a row, remember
Speaker 2: horizontal across a period. They're related because they all have
Speaker 2: the same shell, the same number of shells one, two, three, four,
Speaker 2: and so on the groups up and down the columns.
Speaker 2: They're more related really because they have the same number
Speaker 2: of electrons in the outermost shell. They can have a
Speaker 2: bunch of different numbers of shells, like for example, I
Speaker 2: think floorine can have five shells but only one electron
Speaker 2: in that that outermost shell, and or it could have
Speaker 2: one shell and just have one electron in that outermost shell,
Speaker 2: like a hydrogen. And they're more related because they'll they'll
Speaker 2: react to other things more than they would if they
Speaker 2: had different numbers of electrons.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we can add something to something you should remember
Speaker 1: because this will make you look even one step smarter
Speaker 1: before you run out of the room through the wall,
Speaker 1: just say, oh, yeah, you know, it's organized into periods
Speaker 1: and groups, and the periods of the rows and the
Speaker 1: groups of the columns in if you ask me the
Speaker 1: columns aka groups, that's really where it's at.
Speaker 2: They're more related, they're.
Speaker 1: More related, and then you run through the wall.
Speaker 2: Right, So let me give you an example here.
Speaker 1: Okay, all right, this is if you want to really,
Speaker 1: really really be smart, you remember.
Speaker 2: This, right, if you have your periodic table out really honestly,
Speaker 2: it will make this whole thing so much easier. But
Speaker 2: if you look all the way down to the second
Speaker 2: group from the right that starts with florine. Yeah, if
Speaker 2: you look at floorine that has I think nine electrons
Speaker 2: and it's in period two, so we know that it
Speaker 2: has two shells. So we know that it has two
Speaker 2: electrons in its first shell, so it must have seven
Speaker 2: electrons in its extra shell or a second shell. And
Speaker 2: since we know that the second shell can hold eight,
Speaker 2: there's one little irritating gap and it wants to fill it.
Speaker 2: So fluorine is super duper reactive. On the other hand,
Speaker 2: you've got things like potassium. It has only one electron
Speaker 2: and it's our most shell, and it wants to actually
Speaker 2: get rid of that electron because I think I said earlier,
Speaker 2: when a shell is full, the atom is content and happy.
Speaker 2: It doesn't want to do anything with anybody. If it
Speaker 2: just has one left over, like one hole or one electron,
Speaker 2: it either wants to get rid of that one electron
Speaker 2: so that it can lose that shell and go down
Speaker 2: to the next shell which is full, or it can
Speaker 2: fill its shell like fluorine wants to with an extra electron.
Speaker 2: Either way, they're super reactive, and it all happens in
Speaker 2: the outermost shell, the valance shell, and that's why that's
Speaker 2: where all that action happens.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know what something we haven't even said
Speaker 1: that I think is important that dawned on me. What
Speaker 1: is the periodic table. Isn't just a like, let's just
Speaker 1: do this thing so we can group them together a
Speaker 1: periodic table. The periodic table is made organize this way
Speaker 1: so chemist and people that really know what they're doing
Speaker 1: can look at a poster on a wall at any
Speaker 1: of those squares and know Because of where it is
Speaker 1: on the row, where it is on the column, what
Speaker 1: color it is, and what block it is, and we'll
Speaker 1: get to those things in a minute. And they can
Speaker 1: know a lot of very specific things just because of
Speaker 1: where it sits and what it looks like and what
Speaker 1: color it is.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they can tell you whether it's going to blow
Speaker 2: up in water, like exactly like I guess apparently sodium
Speaker 2: pure sodium does. They can tell you if it's shiny.
Speaker 2: There's all of this has to do just almost entirely
Speaker 2: with the number of electrons it has in its outermost shell.
Speaker 1: All that stuff.
Speaker 2: That's the evolution of the periodic table. People notice properties,
Speaker 2: physical properties, They noticed appearance, stuff like that, and then
Speaker 2: as they learned more and more about the atom, they
Speaker 2: figured out why in the atom those properties existed. They
Speaker 2: were able to classify those things together in the periodic table. So,
Speaker 2: like you said, a chemist today can look at that
Speaker 2: and be like, oh, that's going to be a shiny
Speaker 2: metal that will explode in your hand if you look
Speaker 2: at it wrong, because it's in this group of elements, right,
Speaker 2: And I saw it described by a chemist really well,
Speaker 2: if you like, to a chemist, a periodic table looks
Speaker 2: like a map to us. Like if you look at
Speaker 2: a map of the United States, you know that if
Speaker 2: you are looking at someplace in the north, it's going
Speaker 2: to be colder there than somewhere in the south. You
Speaker 2: don't know exactly what the temperature is or anything like
Speaker 2: that necessarily, but you know, generally based on this map,
Speaker 2: it's a map to the elements.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it also might you know, you might think
Speaker 1: if you're looking at a map of the South, like
Speaker 1: that's where people are more like this and in the
Speaker 1: Midwest people maybe you know, it tells you. A map
Speaker 1: tells you a lot more than just like what the
Speaker 1: weather's like. Yeah, just like a periodic table. So if
Speaker 1: a scientist, if a chemist looks at silicon, I look
Speaker 1: at it and I see a capital S lowercase I,
Speaker 1: the word silicon, the number fourteen in the left hand corner,
Speaker 1: and that it's yellow. A chemist looks at it and says, well,
Speaker 1: I see it's in between on the row aluminum and phosphorus,
Speaker 1: and in the column it's below carbon and above germanium.
Speaker 1: And I see it's numbers fourteen and it's yellow, which
Speaker 1: means it's a metaloid. So I can tell you like
Speaker 1: these twelve things about silicon just because of where it
Speaker 1: sits on that map. Yes, it's pretty amazing. I just
Speaker 1: I don't get it, but it's amazing, right.
Speaker 2: I was just going to say, we're not going to
Speaker 2: explain what those fourteen things are because now there are
Speaker 2: the kind of things you have to go to graduate
Speaker 2: school in chemistry to truly understand. It's okay that we
Speaker 2: don't understand it. All you have to take away from
Speaker 2: this and all we're trying to get across, is that
Speaker 2: trained chemists can look at the periodic table and realize
Speaker 2: a lot about whatever element they're looking at and figure
Speaker 2: out how to mix it with other elements to do
Speaker 2: amazing things. Or if you put together these two things,
Speaker 2: this is probably the reaction that you're going to have.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's also for someone like us. It can
Speaker 1: get really confusing because when you look at different periodic tables,
Speaker 1: one thing you'll notice is that the colors may be different,
Speaker 1: like that there is no unless I'm wrong, there isn't
Speaker 1: one completely settled. This is the only way to do it.
Speaker 1: Periodic table. Oh no, as far as a lot of
Speaker 1: it goes. But like you know, depending on who you
Speaker 1: are and how you want to organize a periodic table
Speaker 1: that you use. Those colors may mean different things, so
Speaker 1: it can get really really confusing. Oh yeah when it
Speaker 1: comes to that stuff.
Speaker 2: For sure. And usually there is like a key or
Speaker 2: a legend on the periodic table that says, this is
Speaker 2: what these colors mean. But if you take away the colors,
Speaker 2: the layout of them across and down, if you look
Speaker 2: at a periodic table, that's generally going to be the
Speaker 2: same for any periodic table that looks even roughly like
Speaker 2: what you're looking at. It's the colors that really kind
Speaker 2: of change things up. But more and more, as we've
Speaker 2: learned more about the atom, starting in the early twentieth
Speaker 2: century onward, and quantum mechanics kind of became a thing
Speaker 2: that got incorporated into the periodic table as well, And
Speaker 2: that is where we get to essentially the third way
Speaker 2: that the whole thing's organized, which is by blocks, subshells, S, P, D,
Speaker 2: and F and so the number the number of shells
Speaker 2: that an element has that's its period across, the number
Speaker 2: of electrons in its outermost shell that's its group. The
Speaker 2: blocks describe where the outer most electron is, and if
Speaker 2: you'll allow me for a second to just kind of
Speaker 2: take a little divergence here. It helps under it helps
Speaker 2: you understand it.
Speaker 1: I think, please, can we talk about baseball?
Speaker 2: No, not that kind of divergence, like deeper into chemistry
Speaker 2: kind of divergence.
Speaker 1: Okay, I'm gonna go out and think about baseball.
Speaker 2: Okay. So, so that whole model that Nils Bor gave
Speaker 2: us of, like the planetoid nucleus and or the sun
Speaker 2: like nucleus and the planetoid electron orbiting it, that is
Speaker 2: really off. That's not at all what they're like. It's
Speaker 2: good for people who don't really care about this kind
Speaker 2: of thing to walk around thinking, but when you actually
Speaker 2: start to try to understand the periodic table, it really
Speaker 2: gets in the way. So if you can kind of
Speaker 2: throw that out and instead think of electrons as not
Speaker 2: particles like planetoids, they're actually waves of energy, right, and
Speaker 2: they like to orbit atoms because their negative electrical charge
Speaker 2: is attracted to the positive electrical charge of the protons.
Speaker 2: That's why they're orbiting or flying around that nucleus. But
Speaker 2: they don't do it in like these tight little orbits
Speaker 2: like a planet does around like the Sun. Instead, they
Speaker 2: inhabit three dimensional areas that follow predictable shapes. Depending on
Speaker 2: the energy level of that electron. You can say what
Speaker 2: shape it's going to follow around that nucleus, but you
Speaker 2: can't say where it is at any given point in time,
Speaker 2: thanks to our friend Heisenberg's uncertainty principle. Heisenberg said, you
Speaker 2: can know the velocity of an object, or you can
Speaker 2: know the location of a quantum object. You can't know both.
Speaker 2: And because we know the energy of an object, we
Speaker 2: can figure out its velocity at speed like an electron,
Speaker 2: which means we can't know where it is. So these
Speaker 2: orbits actually are where they may be ninety percent of
Speaker 2: the time. That's what an actual electron orbit is. And
Speaker 2: again it follows is weird, cool looking little three dimensional
Speaker 2: four leaf clover shapes just really neat and depending on
Speaker 2: on the energy of the electron, it's going to inhabit
Speaker 2: a specific place ninety percent of the time around the
Speaker 2: nucleus of that atom, either close to the atom further
Speaker 2: out further out, depending on the shell that it's associated with.
Speaker 2: And the block is where the highest energy the outermost
Speaker 2: electron is in that position. And again it's denoted by
Speaker 2: SPD and F and it gets way more arcane than that.
Speaker 2: But all you have to remember is that when you're
Speaker 2: looking at blocks, they're talking about the specific location of
Speaker 2: the most energetic electron. And again, since the outermost electrons
Speaker 2: are where all the action happens, the most energetic of
Speaker 2: the outermost electrons are really where the action happens. And
Speaker 2: that's why it's become a little more sophisticated, a little
Speaker 2: more refined over time, thanks to the addition of quantum
Speaker 2: mechanics in our understanding of the atom. Are you there, Chuck?
Speaker 2: Did you outside?
Speaker 1: Sorry, I just came back in. I didn't actually think
Speaker 1: about baseball. I was just kidding. I watched an entire
Speaker 1: baseball game.
Speaker 2: Oh, who won?
Speaker 1: I have no joke. My brain is too mushy for
Speaker 1: a joke right now. No, I actually listened to that
Speaker 1: and I learned from you.
Speaker 2: So oh. I appreciate that. Thank you, because I felt
Speaker 2: like I was hanging from a trapeze by my fingernails.
Speaker 1: Well, I was underneath you with a net. That's all
Speaker 1: I'm good for.
Speaker 2: It, Thanks, buddy, I appreciate it. And by the way,
Speaker 2: I didn't want to just walk past. That's all you're
Speaker 2: good for. I just couldn't even bring myself to recognize
Speaker 2: such a dumb thing that was said.
Speaker 1: I appreciate that. So the final thing we got to
Speaker 1: talk about is kind of brings it back to the
Speaker 1: beginning of how they originally just started to think about
Speaker 1: grouping things, which was by their atomic mass. That the
Speaker 1: sort of very basic thing that they first thought they
Speaker 1: could use as a grouping device. And they still will
Speaker 1: indicate the atomic mass on most periodic tables, but the
Speaker 1: atomic mass is actually a weighted average of the amount
Speaker 1: of protons plus neutrons, But it depends on how abundant
Speaker 1: different isotopes in that element are out in nature, and
Speaker 1: it's not always the same. So carbon is a great
Speaker 1: example that Livia used. It always has six protons, usually
Speaker 1: has six neutrons, but sometimes can have seven or eight.
Speaker 1: So instead of having an atomic mass of just twelve
Speaker 1: six plus six, they take a weighted average and it
Speaker 1: weighs out to twelve point zero one point one. So
Speaker 1: if you see those numbers with a decimal point, you
Speaker 1: can understand that that's because it's a weighted average and
Speaker 1: not just a locked in number.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it doesn't necessarily have much to do with
Speaker 2: the periodic table. But you've mentioned isotopes, and all those
Speaker 2: are as an element with more or less electrons than
Speaker 2: it has when it's stable in a neutral charge. If
Speaker 2: you take away an electron, it has more positively charged
Speaker 2: protons and electrons, so that's a positive iyon. If you
Speaker 2: add an electron, like say fluorine wants to do, it
Speaker 2: becomes a it has more electrons than protons, so it
Speaker 2: becomes a negatively charged isotope. So those are possible too.
Speaker 2: But just bear in mind you're not changing the number
Speaker 2: of protons, because if you do that you have a
Speaker 2: new element. You're just changing the number of electrons, either
Speaker 2: adding or taking away. And one of the other things
Speaker 2: about the periodic table is you can point to different
Speaker 2: different sections and be like, those are the ones that
Speaker 2: form positive ions because they give away their extra electron.
Speaker 2: Those are the ones that form negative ions because they
Speaker 2: attract extra electrons that they normally have in their neutrally
Speaker 2: charged state. That's another thing that you can just point
Speaker 2: to at the periodic table.
Speaker 1: Pretty amazing, it is.
Speaker 2: I mean, the fact that people have figured this out
Speaker 2: is just hats off to all of the scientificals that
Speaker 2: were involved in this. Over the years.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I say, we take a break, sure, and when
Speaker 1: we come back, we're going to tell you about how
Speaker 1: things got very interesting in terms of the periodic table.
Speaker 1: And then I jeen thirties right after this.
Speaker 2: Chuck, I feel like we made it through the hardest part.
Speaker 2: We're out of the out of the woods.
Speaker 1: As I'm shaking a little less, I am too, but
Speaker 1: I won't fully relax for another fifteen.
Speaker 2: Just hang in, hang in there, We'll get it all right.
Speaker 1: So what happened in the nineteen thirties.
Speaker 2: Oh, well, a guy named doctor Lawrence I can't remember,
Speaker 2: but he the Lawrence Livermore Laboratories named after him, in
Speaker 2: part invented particle accelerators, where you use incredible amounts of
Speaker 2: energy to throw trillions of particles of different weights or
Speaker 2: specific weights at a target atom. Tell them what Einstein how?
Speaker 2: Einstein described this process.
Speaker 1: Like shooting birds in the dark in a country where
Speaker 1: there are only a few birds.
Speaker 2: Right, Like, the chances of you actually having a collision
Speaker 2: are so remote that you like, they're almost indescribable mathematically.
Speaker 2: But if you shoot trillions of particles, you really increase
Speaker 2: your chances of there being some kind of collision and
Speaker 2: when you collide a one particle one atom with another
Speaker 2: atom with enough energy, they can combine. And when you
Speaker 2: add proton to proton, remember, you get a new element.
Speaker 2: And so with particle accelerators they were able to start
Speaker 2: creating elements that you can't find in nature. And then
Speaker 2: you started doing this all the way back in the
Speaker 2: nineteen thirties, and this research is what actually directly led
Speaker 2: to nuclear bomb. Apparently, when Einstein heard that Lawrence had
Speaker 2: created this particle accelerator, he advised FDR to start working
Speaker 2: on a bomb because it was now a thing, like
Speaker 2: the world had just been prepared scientifically for a bomb
Speaker 2: to exist soon.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so lab created elements, like you said, started being
Speaker 1: a thing in nineteen thirty seven. Anything past uranium on
Speaker 1: the chart you cannot find in nature because it decays
Speaker 1: much too fast to even be around and know it's
Speaker 1: a thing and study. But so anything past uranium as
Speaker 1: LAB created. And in nineteen thirty seven, technetium was the
Speaker 1: very first blank spot to be filled in with a
Speaker 1: LAB created element as number forty three nuclear bombs that
Speaker 1: you mentioned when they started doing the nuclear tests out
Speaker 1: on the Marshall Islands in the fifties, they would send
Speaker 1: planes out into these explosions with filters on them to
Speaker 1: scoop up unusual atoms and discover potentially elements. That is
Speaker 1: how we got element ninety nine named Einsteinium. And I
Speaker 1: guess we should talk a little bit about the naming
Speaker 1: because the IUPAC actually has rules around this. It says
Speaker 1: new elements have to be named, and this is very interesting.
Speaker 1: A mineral, a place or a country, a property, or
Speaker 1: a scientist or a mythological concept, which is fascinating. So
Speaker 1: we have some of the latest elements. I believe in
Speaker 1: twenty sixteen is when we got one thirteen through eighteen.
Speaker 1: We got the element tennessine because it was there were
Speaker 1: institutions in Tennessee that led to the discovery of this
Speaker 1: super heavy element, and so they named it Tennessee and
Speaker 1: most of them sort of follow that naming convention.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Nihonium is named after Nihan, which is the Japanese
Speaker 2: name for Japan. A Muscovian is named after Moscow where
Speaker 2: a lab where that was created in a Ghanissan Oganissan
Speaker 2: Organisan aganison, that's what it is. It's named after a
Speaker 2: guy named Yuri Oganessian who is a Russian essentially element hunter.
Speaker 2: Now he has got tons of funding behind him, has
Speaker 2: set up new particle accelerators with more and more energy,
Speaker 2: and is bashing things together in the search for entirely
Speaker 2: new elements that not only don't exist on Earth, they
Speaker 2: may not exist anywhere else in the universe. They may
Speaker 2: only exist theoretically until Aganessian manages to smash the right
Speaker 2: atoms together to create those elements for a pico second.
Speaker 2: Like they're so unstable that they last almost no time
Speaker 2: at all, which makes them totally useless to us.
Speaker 1: Yeah, as of now.
Speaker 2: The fact that, like you said, they predicted I think
Speaker 2: it's going to go up to one hundred and seventy three.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and we're at one hundred and what eighteen.
Speaker 2: Makes people like Agnessian just crazy, like they want to
Speaker 2: find them all. Actually found a couple of those most
Speaker 2: recent ones that were inducted, I guess in the periodic
Speaker 2: table in twenty sixteen.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and this is kind of cool too. Oganessian apparently
Speaker 1: wanted to name that element stardust in honor of David Bowie,
Speaker 1: but it didn't fit the naming criteria.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, too bad, so sad, Yeah.
Speaker 1: Too bad. So as far as the sort of the
Speaker 1: coda on this, Livia is keen to point out that
Speaker 1: there are gaps in the framework. Still, there are issues.
Speaker 1: When you look at the periodic table, you needn't only
Speaker 1: look at the very first one hydrogen at the far
Speaker 1: left of the table. It's there because it has that
Speaker 1: one electron, but it is not like any of the
Speaker 1: rest of its group, because the rest of them are
Speaker 1: all alkali metals. It's actually more similar to something like chlorine,
Speaker 1: which is in the second column from the right. But
Speaker 1: you know, there's still debate on like it's not settled
Speaker 1: on where things should be placed on these various and
Speaker 1: there have been you know, there are alternative tables that
Speaker 1: people have put out over the years with different tweaks,
Speaker 1: some small, some large, and it's pretty interesting, I think.
Speaker 2: And there's also that two period section that's always removed
Speaker 2: from the rest of the periodic table. It's put down
Speaker 2: below it. Those two sections actually go in that's the
Speaker 2: f block, right, yeah, the bottom two rows, so they
Speaker 2: come after I think, bury them and just go all
Speaker 2: the way over to oh, I can't remember the other one,
Speaker 2: but imagine that the periodic table was looked like it did,
Speaker 2: but then the bottom two rows were about twice as
Speaker 2: long as they are now. It looked weird, and it's
Speaker 2: because you would take that lower F block and put
Speaker 2: it into its proper place if you're arranging these things
Speaker 2: by atomic number. But the reason why the F block
Speaker 2: is pulled out is because those two rows of elements,
Speaker 2: the actin needs and lath the needs. I think they
Speaker 2: might like follow an atomic number in that way, but
Speaker 2: their properties are totally different from their periods or their groups.
Speaker 2: And the reason why is because they're the only two
Speaker 2: groups that have the F position subshell filled by an electron,
Speaker 2: which completely alters their everything. It's just different than all
Speaker 2: of the other ones. And it's different enough that they
Speaker 2: just basically removed it until they can figure out where
Speaker 2: it should sit, because depending on how you interpret where
Speaker 2: like how the periodic table should be laid out, they
Speaker 2: should go here, they should go there, or they should
Speaker 2: just stay out like they are now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there are some and it's kind of fun to
Speaker 1: look some of these up if you want to see
Speaker 1: some kind of cool at the very least just esthetic examples.
Speaker 1: And then they're not just like, oh, this looks cooler.
Speaker 1: It makes sense to the person who has put out
Speaker 1: this whatever alternative or alternate periodic table, Like in nineteen
Speaker 1: forty nine, Lvia found one from Life magazine that is
Speaker 1: a spiral, And there are quite a few different spiral
Speaker 1: or spirillic designs where you have hydrogen at the center
Speaker 1: and it's sort of like racetrack shape. If you look
Speaker 1: at any just look up spiral based periodic chart, and
Speaker 1: they're very nice to look at, I imagine they are
Speaker 1: much much harder to sort of make sense of and
Speaker 1: read unless you're the person who made it or a chemist. Yeah,
Speaker 1: chemists would still probably be like, well, why are you
Speaker 1: doing it that way?
Speaker 2: I liked it the other way.
Speaker 1: Or that three D one that Timothy Stowe came up
Speaker 1: with that I think physicists are pretty keen on that
Speaker 1: has three axes of different colors that represent quantum numbers
Speaker 1: that describe the electrons. But it's you know, if you
Speaker 1: look at a three D version, that's kind of cool too.
Speaker 1: But if you find the one, the traditional one confusing
Speaker 1: as a non chemist, just try looking at any of
Speaker 1: these other ones. It's really confusing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And it's all it is is it's saying, well, actually, no,
Speaker 2: I think we should arrange them so that they're connected
Speaker 2: more by this property like electro negativity, or they're shiny
Speaker 2: where they're pretty. I like this these elements, and so
Speaker 2: we're going to put them together. These are my favorite elements.
Speaker 2: It's just kind of like that, and so you can
Speaker 2: bend them in all sorts of weird shapes.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I have my own periodic table I've designed. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: and it is just a big black block and then
Speaker 1: times new roman and yellow lettering in the middle. It says,
Speaker 1: who gives a right?
Speaker 2: I would have imagined it was a traditional periodic table,
Speaker 2: but scratched out with a pen rights violently.
Speaker 1: No, that's good. I like that better. I'm gonna change mine.
Speaker 2: I've got one other thing that doesn't. It has a
Speaker 2: lot to do with everything, but not anything we're going
Speaker 2: to go into. But there are some especially those elements
Speaker 2: that don't occur in nature and they have to to
Speaker 2: create in particle accelerators, but also some that occur in nature,
Speaker 2: like gold and mercury are two good examples. They have
Speaker 2: electrons that spin so fast, that are moving at such
Speaker 2: incredible energies that they actually are like a significant fraction
Speaker 2: of the speed of light. That's how fast they're going.
Speaker 2: And it doesn't matter whether you're talking about like a
Speaker 2: photon or a planet or a black hole or an electron.
Speaker 2: Anything that has mass and can move at anything like
Speaker 2: half the speed of light is going to actually bend
Speaker 2: time and space. And so for some kinds of elements
Speaker 2: that have relativistic speeds, meaning they're electrons travel close to
Speaker 2: the speed of light, they have all sorts of freaky
Speaker 2: dicky properties. It's why gold is gold. Not going to
Speaker 2: get into that, just trust me. It's why gold is gold.
Speaker 2: But also it means that if you could go into
Speaker 2: those atoms and just kind of exists in them as
Speaker 2: if they were a universe, you would see that time
Speaker 2: and space was bent compared to how time and space
Speaker 2: exists outside of those atoms, like on our level. That's
Speaker 2: what atomic scientists have figured out, and it's actually kind
Speaker 2: of having a mind breaking effect on the periodic table
Speaker 2: to an extent amazing. I think so too. That's it, Chuck,
Speaker 2: we did periodic tables. It's done. You did great.
Speaker 1: Oh boy, we don't have to do it again.
Speaker 2: No, I don't think so, I hope not. Yeah, what
Speaker 2: is this Murphy's law? Well, since I said Murphy's Law,
Speaker 2: and Chuck laugh because he got the joke. You may
Speaker 2: not have him. That's okay. That means it's time for
Speaker 2: listener now.
Speaker 1: All right, I'm gonna call this very quick follow up
Speaker 1: from our Halloween episode. As we record this, it is
Speaker 1: actually Halloween, so that has just come out today, and
Speaker 1: we have something from Owen that perhaps explained something that
Speaker 1: we kind of wondered about. Hey, guys, once again loving
Speaker 1: the Yearly Spectacular. Figured i'd mentioned my take on what
Speaker 1: the Hermit meant. Hermit Hermit meant when he said the
Speaker 1: man's eyes didn't match his mouth. Oh yeah, I think
Speaker 1: it might have something to do with honesty, like the
Speaker 1: words of encouragement were somehow disingenuine. That lined up with
Speaker 1: the idea that the hermit has sort of seen flaws
Speaker 1: and faults. That makes sense to me. I didn't match
Speaker 1: his mouth.
Speaker 2: That's like the best explanation I've heard so far. It's
Speaker 2: also the only explanation, but it's a good one.
Speaker 1: I think it's totally it. And Owen says, regardless of
Speaker 1: whether that's the author's intent, I'm using the description in
Speaker 1: a song i'm writing. So thanks for the inspiration and
Speaker 1: in all honesty, the voice work is on point this year.
Speaker 1: That is from Oen.
Speaker 2: Makes a Lot, Owen, Here's a here's some inspiration for
Speaker 2: the musical part of your song.
Speaker 1: Oh.
Speaker 2: If you want to be like Owen and write in
Speaker 2: to explain something to us, we love that kind of thing.
Speaker 2: You can put it in an email and send it
Speaker 2: off to Stuff Podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 3: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
Speaker 3: more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 3: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.