The Elements Unearthed

Finally, after months of waiting and effort, the two videos on the history of the periodic table are complete. Here they are:

The title of this video is:   The Periodic Table Part 1: Before Mendeleev

It’s YouTube links are: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQghZkTyqP4 (Part 1-A) and  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-SBTYQNAcM (Part 1-B)

The title of this video is: The Periodic Table Part 2: Mendeleev and Beyond

The YouTube links are: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9tTcOnoNko (Part 2-A) and: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7msPp2QYrCk (Part 2-B)

They feature interviews with Dr. Eric Scerri of UCLA, to which I have added my own narration, animations, illustrations, photos, captions, etc. as well as publication artwork and notes by Edward G. Mazurs (see my previous Periodic Tables posts). I have edited the videos into two parts. Part 1 covers the events leading up to Mendeleev’s invention of the periodic table including the work of several precursors such as de Chancourtois, Newlands, Odling, Hinrichs, and Meyer. The second part covers Mendeleev’s working out of his periodic system and the work of his successors, as well as some interesting questions such as whether the periodic table can be entirely deduced from quantum mechanics and the mystery of the Knight’s Move pattern of properties. Part 1 is 17 minutes long and Part 2 is just under 20 minutes. I am very pleased with the results; I’ve been using every spare minute to complete the editing which is why I haven’t posted here for so long. I hope you feel it is worth the wait. Please let me know what you think!

The Knight's Move Pattern: Zn to Sn

In addition to placing them into this specific post, I will set up a separate page on this blog just for the completed videos. So far I’ve done the rationale video in two parts, now these two on the periodic table, and more will follow as soon as possible. The next will be on the mining and refining of beryllium ore, then on glass blowing, and so on. I have materials (video, photos, etc.) for about 30 episodes already and will get more as student teams begin to complete projects. I will also post these episodes to YouTube but will have to cut each part in two since you can only do ten minutes at a time on YouTube. I also plan on creating a completely separate website just for these videos so that I can place my own metadata on them and upload them to Apple iTunes as podcasts. As these steps are completed, I’ll post information here.

Next week I travel to Philadelphia to present this project at the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) conference. My presentation will be on Saturday, March 20 at 9:30 in Room D-17 of the Pennsylvania Convention Center. I hope to do a few posts from the conference. Looking through the program, I see several names I recognize among the presenters from my years of facilitating educational workshops for NASA, so it will be fun to see them again. I also hope to work out corporate sponsorship of this project, including funding, so that I can finally begin Phase II to have teams of student in Utah, Colorado, and Nevada start to create their own episodes of the mining and chemical manufacturing in their communities. It will be a very busy week getting ready for the conference. I’ll post again in a few days once all the uploading and links have been created to these videos.