Google celebrated what would have been Dmitri Mendeleev’s 182 birthday today, with a Doodle. Mendeleev is considered the Father of Periodic Table, though he was neither the first with a ‘table’, nor is his method followed today [1]. However it is apt that a doodle is released today, as the last 4 elements of the seventh (and last) Row were verified by International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) recently on 30 Dec 2015.
Which brings us to the uniqueness of Mendeleev’s Periodic Table. While he arranged the then known 63 elements in horizontal rows called groups (which differs from the modern Periodic Table where they are arranged in vertical columns) with same chemical properties, he realised that there are ‘missing’ elements, and left gaps for those undiscovered. He also predicted the Atomic Mass and chemical properties of 5 of those elements. Thus Mendeleev created the forerunner of the modern Periodic Table, which allowed for future discoveries to be incorporated, rationally into an existing table.
Of course he could not have put together the modern Periodic Table, which is based on Atomic Number (the number of protons – and also electrons in an atom), as the concept of Atomic Number was suggested only in 1913 by Moseley. Remember, Mendeleev put together his Periodic Table in 1869, while the electron itself was discovered only in 1897 by J.J. Thompson, the proton in 1909 by Rutherford, and the neutron by Chadwick in 1935.
[1] Dobereiner in 1829, and Newlands in 1864 had their own Triads, and Octaves based tables; Mendeleev’s table was based on Atomic Mass (or what was called Atomic Weight back then), while modern Periodic Table is based on Atomic Number.
So here we have the Mendeleev Doodle. But strangely, this doodle will not appear in the US & Latin American homepages of Google or the Chinese and VietNam pages – they will picture the Chinese & Tet New Year doodles respectively. I can understand VietNam and China, but why USA?
BTW of all the names mentioned above – Bohr, Chadwick, Dobereiner, Moseley, Newlands, Rutherford, and Thompson, only Niels Bohr has had a doodle till date – for his 127 birthday on 07 Oct 2012.
Which brings us to the uniqueness of Mendeleev’s Periodic Table. While he arranged the then known 63 elements in horizontal rows called groups (which differs from the modern Periodic Table where they are arranged in vertical columns) with same chemical properties, he realised that there are ‘missing’ elements, and left gaps for those undiscovered. He also predicted the Atomic Mass and chemical properties of 5 of those elements. Thus Mendeleev created the forerunner of the modern Periodic Table, which allowed for future discoveries to be incorporated, rationally into an existing table.
Of course he could not have put together the modern Periodic Table, which is based on Atomic Number (the number of protons – and also electrons in an atom), as the concept of Atomic Number was suggested only in 1913 by Moseley. Remember, Mendeleev put together his Periodic Table in 1869, while the electron itself was discovered only in 1897 by J.J. Thompson, the proton in 1909 by Rutherford, and the neutron by Chadwick in 1935.
[1] Dobereiner in 1829, and Newlands in 1864 had their own Triads, and Octaves based tables; Mendeleev’s table was based on Atomic Mass (or what was called Atomic Weight back then), while modern Periodic Table is based on Atomic Number.
So here we have the Mendeleev Doodle. But strangely, this doodle will not appear in the US & Latin American homepages of Google or the Chinese and VietNam pages – they will picture the Chinese & Tet New Year doodles respectively. I can understand VietNam and China, but why USA?
BTW of all the names mentioned above – Bohr, Chadwick, Dobereiner, Moseley, Newlands, Rutherford, and Thompson, only Niels Bohr has had a doodle till date – for his 127 birthday on 07 Oct 2012.
No comments:
Post a Comment