July 12, 2016 Tuesday
By the time Mendeleev had become a tenured professor and a full time teacher of chemistry, 56 elements were already known.
Moreover, newer elements were being discovered at a rate of almost one per year.
It was a scene somewhat similar to today's particle physics where we have a bunch of elementary particles and more of them keep coming forth sometimes upsetting the so called "Standard Model".
One can say that the position of elementary particles today is quite similar to the status of elements in mid 1800s.
(Mind you, this is coming from an average ape specialized in eye diseases. So be skeptical.)
Chaos reigned.
There was no proper classification or order.
What he did was the card trick.
He took paper cards and wrote on them their atomic weights and valence with their chemical properties.
It is your homework to find out what is valence if you have forgotten so.
He immediately noticed a pattern emerging which he claimed to have envisioned in a dream.
(You usually tend to dream on the problem you are obsessed with.
Nothing magical about it).
Mendeleev is supposed to have said:
"I saw in a dream a table where all elements fell into place as required.
Awakening, I immediately wrote it on a piece of paper, only in one place did a correction seem necessary."
On March 6, 1869 at the age of 35, Mendeleev presented his table to the Russian Chemical Society.
The title of the paper was:
"The Dependence between the Properties of the Atomic Weights of the Elements".
I shall elaborate further on this seminal paper/presentation which was yet another landmark moment in the history of one of the great apes.
Just to let you know another interesting fact about elements and our ape bodies.
The composition of human body in terms of abundance of elements very closely resembles the sea water...
Save for additional stores of carbon, nitrogen necessary to form the proteins and ribonucleic acids.
A little sprinkling of phosphorus has been added to manufacture that all important energy transferring molecule ATP (adenosine triphosphate).
Stay tuned to the voice of an average storytelling chimpanzee or login at http://panarrans.blogspot.in/
Good night mon ami and my fellow cousin ape.
By the time Mendeleev had become a tenured professor and a full time teacher of chemistry, 56 elements were already known.
Moreover, newer elements were being discovered at a rate of almost one per year.
It was a scene somewhat similar to today's particle physics where we have a bunch of elementary particles and more of them keep coming forth sometimes upsetting the so called "Standard Model".
One can say that the position of elementary particles today is quite similar to the status of elements in mid 1800s.
(Mind you, this is coming from an average ape specialized in eye diseases. So be skeptical.)
Chaos reigned.
There was no proper classification or order.
What he did was the card trick.
He took paper cards and wrote on them their atomic weights and valence with their chemical properties.
It is your homework to find out what is valence if you have forgotten so.
He immediately noticed a pattern emerging which he claimed to have envisioned in a dream.
(You usually tend to dream on the problem you are obsessed with.
Nothing magical about it).
Mendeleev is supposed to have said:
"I saw in a dream a table where all elements fell into place as required.
Awakening, I immediately wrote it on a piece of paper, only in one place did a correction seem necessary."
On March 6, 1869 at the age of 35, Mendeleev presented his table to the Russian Chemical Society.
The title of the paper was:
"The Dependence between the Properties of the Atomic Weights of the Elements".
I shall elaborate further on this seminal paper/presentation which was yet another landmark moment in the history of one of the great apes.
Just to let you know another interesting fact about elements and our ape bodies.
The composition of human body in terms of abundance of elements very closely resembles the sea water...
Save for additional stores of carbon, nitrogen necessary to form the proteins and ribonucleic acids.
A little sprinkling of phosphorus has been added to manufacture that all important energy transferring molecule ATP (adenosine triphosphate).
Stay tuned to the voice of an average storytelling chimpanzee or login at http://panarrans.blogspot.in/
Good night mon ami and my fellow cousin ape.
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