{"id":3900,"date":"2011-06-07T17:18:14","date_gmt":"2011-06-07T17:18:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/?p=3900"},"modified":"2013-09-19T13:33:53","modified_gmt":"2013-09-19T12:33:53","slug":"how-many-elements-are-there-in-the-periodic-table-wrong","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/?p=3900","title":{"rendered":"How many elements are there in the Periodic Table?  Wrong."},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Here\u2019s one for your next pub quiz. <em>Q: <\/em>How many chemical elements are there in the periodic table? <em>A: <\/em>118. Wrong. Two more have just been isolated, to the delight and\/or horror of the world\u2019s chemistry teachers.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The thing about these base elements is that only 94 of them occur naturally on the Earth. The others are produced synthetically. The two new ones, just announced by the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics, arrive and decay in only a few minutes. Flerovium and moscovium, as they have been provisionally named \u2013 but the IUPAP is open to suggestions if you have better ideas \u2013 start their brief existence when curium atoms are bombarded with calcium nuclei. The resulting new elements last a few milliseconds before passing into a different element and then decaying into a third.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Confused? If so spare some sympathy for the periodic tables in school laboratories up and down the land which are now officially out of date. And it could be worse. You could \u2013 like Cambridge University, the BBC and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute \u2013 have just bought a \u00a34,750 (VAT not included) oak coffee table with the out-dated table set into its top.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Still, think of it as work of art from a previous era, rather like Tom Lehrer\u2019s setting of the Periodic Table to the classic G&amp;S patter-tune, The Model of a Modern Major-General. It ends:\u00a0 \u201cThese are the only ones of which the news has come to Harvard, And there may be many others, but they haven\u2019t been discarvard.\u201d Today\u2019s students may prefer a gag that is more up-to-date: \u201cChuck Norris destroyed the periodic table, because the only element he recognises is that of surprise\u201d. Keep up, will you.<strong><\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Here\u2019s one for your next pub quiz. Q: How many chemical elements are there in the periodic table? A: 118. Wrong. Two more have just been isolated, to the delight and\/or horror of the world\u2019s chemistry teachers. The thing about these base elements is that only 94 of them occur naturally on the Earth. The [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3900","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3900","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3900"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3900\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8020,"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3900\/revisions\/8020"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3900"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3900"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3900"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}