Elements on my mind

I suppose that like many other readers of C&EN, I fall behind your production and output. Indeed, sometimes I make no effort to read back issues in turn. Recently, I put aside the Oct. 19, 2015, issue to perhaps drop you a note about the University of Oklahoma’s revamped chemistry graduate program (C&EN, Oct. 19, 2015, page 38). This morning, I perused the Dec. 7/14, 2015, issue with coffee and dwelled on the Newscripts addressing Irish entrepreneur Cillian McMinn’s elements collection project (C&EN, Dec. 7/14, 2015, page 56). The wonderful and constant interest in the periodic table is a joy to most of us aged chemists and obviously to some young ones too.

When I started graduate school in 1952 (I said aged), there were two other students sharing the lab. One, who was a year ahead of me, we’ll call D. The other, two years ahead of me, we’ll call F. D barged right in and said, “Look what I can do.” He went to the chalkboard and started writing, from memory, the periodic table. It was like a bar trick for him. Shortly afterward, F did the same thing. When I inquired why, F responded that D was such a nuisance with it, F started to memorize the table in self-defense.

The following semester, a new instructor offered a course in the chemistry of the less familiar elements. (Oklahoma’s new program includes the class “Chemistry of the Periodic Table,” which reminded me.) D and F enrolled and reported back that in the first session the instructor complained that students did not know the periodic table and asked the class to take a sheet of paper and write the parts of the table they could remember. The entire class, which was D and F, obliged.

The course never met again.

Harvey Alter
Frederick, Md.