The Periodic Table of Videos
by Phil on Jan 27 2009 (2015 Views)I’d like to share this link with you: The Periodic Table of Videos (http://www.periodicvideos.com/).
A group of lecturers around Prof. Martyn Poliakoff from the University of Nottingham have compiled this “Periodic Table”, which contains a video of a few minutes for every (!) known element. Sometimes it’s an explosive experiment (e.g., Hydrogen), in other cases they simply show a sample, while giving some information about the element. I must say, I am impressed how they manage to come up with something for all the lanthanoids and actinoids. For Ytterbium, Yttrium, Terbium and Erbium, they even went on a trip to Ytterby (Sweden), the town these elements are named after. A great distraction for rainy days, and also a useful video collection for teaching!
I’ve seen that before. You can tell they really have trouble thinking of interesting things to say for some of them, check out the one for Ne, it basically ends with a flustered, “Neon is really boring.” (Or something to that effect.)
This is of course redeemed by the childish glee of them blowing something up when it fits into a discussion of an element. (Group 1 metals, Aluminum thermite reactions, etc.) I also like seeing some of the rarer metals spooled up as really thin wire. Damn that stuff is expensive.
Anyone else really disappointed with their Cesium video?