I have an app on my phone.
Actually, I have lots of apps on my phone.
But the one I’m thinking about is called PT-PRO.
PT could stand for anything. I always think about John F. Kennedy on PT-109. In that case, it stood for “Patrol Torpedo” boat.
PT could also mean Physical Therapy.
Or even Part Time, Pacific Time, Personal Trainer, or Pop Tart.
But in this case, the case of my phone app, it stands for Periodic Table.
Oh, don’t run off. Don’t close your laptop or pull up a Candy Crush on your phone. I promise not to go all “chemistry” on you.
I’m just going to tell you about my app.
I can pull up any one of the 127 elements in the blink of an eye, from Hydrogen to Unbiseptium, with an atomic weight of 335. I’m a nerd that way. I like to read about them. The elements.
It is because they make up everything. Every little thing in the physical world (and big things, too) is made of elements from the periodic table. Those elements combine with one another in endless combinations to create a vast array of molecules, which are the architecture, the building blocks, of everything around us.
It’s elemental.
At any rate, I write this today because on this date, February 8, 1834, Dmitri Mendeleev was born, in the cold, cold place of “Verkhnie Aremzyani” near Siberia, Russia.
Yes, good Dmitri Mendeleev, a chemist, and inventor.
He formulated the Periodic Law and created a farsighted version of the elements. It was quite astonishing. Mendeleev used the table to correct the properties of some already discovered elements. He also used his good table to predict the properties of eight elements yet to be discovered. That’s right — YET to be discovered. And. He was correct.
I won’t go into all the details, as they would probably bore almost everyone. But he made a deck of cards that he carried everywhere, and he would constantly be laying these out and studying them, trying to figure out the proper order in which elements should be arranged. Like Tarot cards for the elements.
I should note that chemists began discovering the elements during the mid-1700s. Refresher: Elements are substances made up of just one kind of atom. But these were all willy-nilly. More than a century passed when these had no organization or lexicon. It wasn’t until 1869 that Mendeleev devised the Periodic Table.
So. What is around us?
The most abundant element in the Universe is hydrogen, which makes up about 75% of all matter. Helium makes up most of the remaining 25%. Oxygen is the third-most abundant element in the Universe. All of the other elements are relatively rare. Remember, the Universe is a big dang place.
Now. Earth is quite a bit different from the Universe. The most abundant element in the Earth’s crust is oxygen, making up 46.6% of Earth’s mass. Silicon is the second most abundant element (27.7%), followed by aluminum (8.1%), iron (5.0%), and many more. AND. That is just the crust. The outer portion of the Earth. We aren’t entirely sure about what is inside the Earth at the mantle and core.
Finally. You. And me. The most abundant element in the human body is oxygen. It makes up 65% of a person’s body weight. Carbon is the second-most abundant element, making up 18% of the body. We have more hydrogen atoms than any other element. But hydrogen is small compared to the other elements. Even though there are gazillions of hydrogen atoms, it only makes up about 10% of us. We are more gas than anything. How about that?
So. Thanks Mendeleev.
Now we all know where we stand.
And now we can show people what we’re made of.
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“I think that the ideal space must contain elements of magic, serenity, sorcery and mystery.”
— Luis Barragan
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“Everyone should be respected as an individual.”
Albert Einstein
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“Human behavior flows from three main sources: desire, emotion, and knowledge.”
— Plato
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Show us what you’re made of, air head.
