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