Are we going to Ecuador?

As always, I started chapter three by examining the title, "The Galapagos of the Periodic Table". I always try to think of the title and predict what I may be reading about in the coming pages, but this time I was stumped. My knowledge of the Galapagos is that it is an island chain off the coast of Ecuador. During my sophomore year of high school,  in Spanish class, we had to choose Spanish names and a country we would like to pretend we're from. My name was Silvia and I was "from Ecuador". This is the only reason I know of these islands existence. But what on earth do they have to do with the Periodic Table? My prior knowledge told me that most of the scientists who did work on the Periodic Table were from Europe (surprise, surprise).

As I began reading I was presented with a familiar name, Mendeleev. Yes! I know this guy. Suddenly I am transported back to my high school chemistry class. I am facing the front board and above on the bulletin board are all scientists pictures with the years they lived. Who is in the middle? Mendeleev. Anyone who has taken chemistry knows this guy. After all, he is credited with perhaps the most useful tool in chemistry, the periodic table. I was happy to have some background knowledge because the rest of the chapter that did not speak of him was new for me. Having background knowledge of this significant figure I feel helped me further understand his contributions and it also helped me delve into the works of other scientists.

Mendeleev

There it is. The picture I stared at so often during my chemistry class. Just from the picture, you could tell he was from the 1800s which gave the class an idea of when the study of elements was becoming a major thing in science. It also helped when reading this book to remember this fact and put all of the historical information into context.

There was a lot of historical information in this chapter that it was hard to absorb it all and make sense of it all the first time. Because of this, I had to go and re-read parts and look up more than I had to in previous chapters. There were names I had never heard of as well as interesting facts. I feel as if I still do not really get this book!

From this chapter, I really felt myself focus on Mendeleev. Was it because it was familiar territory? Was it because I really enjoy learning about the periodic table? It was interesting to see his version of the periodic table (shown below) because we credit the periodic table to him. Yet, look at it! It seems empty and void of anything useful compared to a modern one. This is because, as stated throughout the chapter, though he is credited with the periodic table, he was not the only one working on it, just like Darwin was not the only one working on evolution and Einstein was not the only one working on relativity.



Mendeleev's Periodic Table as published in 1869



A modern Periodic Table of Elements

 Reading this chapter really gave me a more historical overview of the study of elements. Rather than studying relationships in the periodic table, like was discussed in the previous chapter, I got to see how it actually came about. Having a little prior knowledge of Mendeleev helped, however, there was a lot of new information that I had to go back and read over to fully process. I definitely used a lot of "fix-up" thought processes this time around!