heavy metals (and a gas)

for proof i'm not making this up, visit:
www.vanderkrogt.net/elements/origin_index.html
webelements.com

okay, first of all, this is probably news to exactly nobody but me. i am showing my own ignorance. whatever.

when i was in seventh grade or maybe eighth my science teacher, mr. fred a. pitts, expected us to memorize the periodic table of elements. or at the very least he expected us to be acquainted enough with the table to be able to balance a chemical equation. i loved this stuff. little puzzles that, when properly solved, created the world out of single elements. it was very helpful to know that Na, when added properly to Cl, would produce the salt sitting in salt shakers all over the world, while the Cl in gas form was used as a weapon in the first world war. descriptions of the gas include the word "suffocating". ah, science. i liked being in on the secret that hydrogen, that terrible gas keeping the sun hot and bright, when slammed together with the surprisingly flammable oxygen in the right proportions, would make fresh water every time. all these elements hung out in predictable groups, little clusters of friends. my friends. i knew right where they were.

so you can imagine my surprise when i saw a large, brightly colored periodic table of elements in a science classroom in my school recently. i went over to visit a bit with the elements. unchanging, in neat, pretty rows. good old hydrogen and helium, up at the edges alone, staring at each other across a great chasm. and that miracle lithium, the element i rely on for my own continued existence, so named because it was first found in a rock. i'm not kidding. the creativity of our greatest minds is never spent naming. actinoids set apart, named for fermi and einstein and nobel. weren't they called actinides before? then iron and cobalt. tin and xenon. and lead, Pb. i have always wondered why Pb. turns out lead used to be plumbium. oh. but under lead, i noticed something awful. something new. elements 112 to 118. all beginning with Uu. what? where did those come from? no, seriously. i'd never seen them before. new elements? when did this happen? it's been quite some time since seventh or eighth grade. it was the late seventies. i suppose anything could have happened. and here's what did.

ununbium- Uub was discovered february 9, 1996. it seems it was created by fusing zinc and lead. by fusing, i mean nuclear fusing. let's revise "discovered". let's call it "accidentally created during a nuclear experiment".

ununtrium- Uut was created in february of 2004. this one is iffy. not yet isolated. only four atoms ever made. can we really afford to use a whole tile on the periodic table for four atoms?

ununquadium- Uuq is evidence scientists are losing it when it comes to naming new elements. informal reports of this adorable heavy metal showed up as early as january of 1999. the site says "currently, the identification of element 114 (that's ununquadium to you and me) is yet to be confirmed". the same guys who brought you all four atoms of ununtrium have managed to cobble together three of ununquadium. nice job, kids.

ununpentium- Uup, just like its sibling ununquadium, has yet to be "discovered", although folks seem to have started talking seriously about it as of february 2004.

ununhexium- Uuh claims to have burst on the scene december 6, 2000. it is a very heavy metal. atomic number 116. un un hex. at this point, naming it caitlynn dylan would have been more original.

ununseptium- Uus has not yet been discovered. oddly enough, we can presume that it is a solid at 298 k and that it is probably dark in appearance. this is even more funny when you consider that on the perodic table of elements, it's the only element tile with no color at all. blank. white.

ununoctium- Uuo was first produced as a single molecule in 2002. in 2005, two more were made. this is probably a good thing as it is very, very heavy. atomic weight 294. yeah.

they are all heavy metals. well, excpt ununoctium. it's a noble gas. still, heavy enough. they are all related, come from the same lab. we could probably put all we have of all instances of all these metals on the head of a pin without disturbing any of the angels dancing there. dance, you heavy elements.

one of the websites mentioned above has periodic tables for sale. generally, i like the standard ones with their color coded groups all neat and tidy. it makes my eyes feel good to look at all those elements right there where they should be. but this fancy one caught my eye. it is a little unsettling to look at at first. the boxes are still outlined in the familiar colors, but inside the boxes are beautiful color photos of the elements against a black background. cobalt is a ghostly bubbling rock. iodine is magnificent. the actinoids are black and white images of the men they're named after. gasses like xenon and neon are glowing tubes shaped for their symbols. the whole thing taken together looks like a printer's tray full of jewels, a glittering menagerie. but the new boxes are empty. there is nothing in them but darkness. night. we do not know what they look like but we have given them names and places in this most basic representation of our world. the blank spaces are beautiful. they are waiting. and now, i am also waiting.

side note. i clicked on a link somewhere and ended up here: www.theodoregray.com/PeriodicTable/
i don't know who this guy is but he built a wooden periodic table table and under each element, there's a little cubby with a sample of the element inside. the guy says it was inspired by something oliver sacks wrote and oliver sacks came to see the table once, along with theodore gray. there are lovely photos of the two men poring over elements at his website. go see them. go see the table. pretty pretty pretty.