On the LEGO Periodic Tower of The Elements

[Rene]

https://www.meta-synthesis.com/webbook/35_pt/pt_database.php?PT_id=1331

Should this table reach production, I’d probably buy one just for the fun of putting it together.

Looking closely at Enrique’s work, I’m not entirely sure how to interpret it in terms of conventional periods. The “hemispiral” at the top runs from H to Be, and the p-s spirals appear to run from the first p element to the second s element—for example, B to Mg, corresponding to 2p to 3s. The spiral also seems to cross block boundaries in non-conventional ways.

Now, I’m no champion of conventionality at all costs. While the spiral is architecturally striking and creative in form, it strikes me as being pedagogically questionable. You’d need to already be familiar with the standard periodic table to make sense of it, and it’s not clear what new insights it provides. Curiously, Enrique includes a conventional periodic table alongside the spiral—an inclusion that rather calls into question the spiral’s raison d’être, aside from having an excuse to play with lego.

The Inshot video of the Periodic Tower of Elements is a bit blurry at first, but the fidelity improves in the latter half, particularly during the tower’s deconstruction. At that point, you can pause and manually advance through the frames to examine the fine details and see how the elements align vertically.

It’s interesting to note that the ps-block elements partly line up over d-block elements—examples include K over Cu, Ca over Zn, Al over Sc, Si over Ti, P over V, and S over Cr. Similarly, some d-block elements line up over f-block elements: Sc over La (which appears to be aligned over Lu), and Ti over Ce.

That said, I’m not sure how pedagogically helpful these alignments are. While they may reflect partial oxidation state consistencies—say, in the +1 to +6 range—they also break down at key points. For instance, the secondary relationship between Cl and Mn, both of which can exhibit a +7 oxidation state, becomes harder to discern. So while the tower may prompt reflection on periodic relationships for the well-versed, its structural alignments are incomplete and may obscure more than they reveal for learners.

As far as I’m aware, only two spiral tables come close to aligning all of the so-called secondary relationships:

Nagayasu Nawa’s 3-D Octagonal Pillar

https://www.meta-synthesis.com/webbook/35_pt/pt_database.php?PT_id=914

Its only shortcoming is the lack of a continuous connection between He and Li—though this could be addressed by positioning H-He just before Li, à la Enrique.

Tang Wah Kow’s Octagonal Prismatic Periodic Table

https://www.meta-synthesis.com/webbook/35_pt/pt_database.php?PT_id=452

Here, the issue is the need for connecting links between the sp, d, and f layers.

More generally, spiral periodic tables do have the virtue of visually emphasising that the elements form a continuous sequence. That said, they are typically harder to construct, read, and memorise than the traditional rectangular form. As Philip Ball, former editor at Nature, puts it:

From the first time I encountered the PT, I cannot recall a time when I failed to grasp that the elements run continuously from the right end back to the left. We don't need a spiral to teach us this. It is pleasing to illustrate it directly, perhaps, but I think it is a poor deal to trade subjective aesthetics (which clearly not everyone shares) for the long-standing traditional navigational axes that chemists use around the PT. Besides, it is not at all clear that we have evolved to make more sense of curves than of straight lines. Everyone comprehends a vertical, or for that matter a horizontal. A group is much more easily eyeballed when one element sits atop another than when we have to follow a curving trajectory across another curving trajectory. This is not to dismiss the spiral PT out of hand—it has its virtues, but I can't see any real gain in pedagogical value.

Ball P 2010, The Disappearing Spoon, Homunculus: Postings from the interface of science and culture, July 22

Returning to Enrique’s conventional periodic table, this shows ten categories of elements:

alkali metals other metals

alkaline earth metals metalloids

transition metals non-metals

lanthanides hydrogen and halogens

actinides noble gases

The categories on the right risk obscuring the periodic table’s underlying block structure and reinforcing ill-considered groupings.

The label “other metals” overlaps exactly with the p-block metals, so it would be clearer and more accurate to call them that.

The category labeled “non-metals” is more helpfully described as "unclassified nonmetals", since it excludes halogens and noble gases while capturing a set of chemically diverse, yet block-consistent, elements.

The label “hydrogen and halogens” is confusing, since hydrogen is neither a halogen nor an alkali metal. It is best classified among the unclassified nonmetals, regardless of whether it is positioned over Li or over F.

Counting the halogens as F, Cl, Br, I, At, and Ts presents another classification issue. As one descends the group, metallicity increases: iodine already displays a metallic lustre in the solid state, and astatine is widely expected to behave as a metal. By extrapolation from periodic trends, tennessine is predicted to be a volatile metal. It would therefore be more accurate to classify F, Cl, Br, and I as "halogen nonmetals", while At and Ts belong with the p-block metals.

The ten categories of elements then become:

alkali metals metalloids

alkaline earth metals unclassified non-metals

transition metals halogen non-metals

lanthanides noble gases

actinides

p-block metals

René

[Jess Tauber]

My CML tetrahedral models have some elements (sorry for the bad pun) of spiral representations, though mixed with (mountain) 'switchback' motifs as you run through periods, of which there are four (LST) per tetrahedral surface. These tend to obscure some of the more obvious relationships in columnar and diagonal cuts through traditional tables but these seem to be recoverable through simple symmetry operations on the tetrahedron. Remember also that where LST periods end and begin form a straight line from the center of the tetrahedron outwards through successive 'jackets' outwards from the central core (which represents the first four LST periods).

Jess Tauber

tetrahed...@gmail.com

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[Rene]

I forgot to ask what others think or feel about the LEGO periodic tower.

As well, it seems to me that there are some other periodic tables that could lend themselves to being built in Lego.

René

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/PT-L/CAO6d3hK6nEvRGdVHHNkXbduiFwtKb7CoL%2BuzQEK_62MoekiscQ%40mail.gmail.com.

[Rene]

In this week’s Chemistry World news:

And finally…

A Spanish scientist is making a bid to bring the periodic table to life as a Lego playset, in a proposal submitted on the company’s website. Based on Heinrich Baumhauer’s 3D design from 1870, the 237-brick scheme has a spiralling tower that maintains periodicity, with each group of elements lining up vertically, while progressing in atomic number from top to bottom. If it garners enough votes via the Lego Ideas site, Lego will decide whether to make it part of their official range.

René