Most of us would have studied about the Periodic Table from our school days and some of us in a little more detail based on what we chose as our majors. For its inventor Dimitri Mendeleyev, it was the recurring patterns on the physical and chemical properties on certain elements that helped him group them in a particular order.
Here is a quick and slick introduction on the Periodic Tables from TedEd.
Almost after a century since Menedleyev’s period, the Periodic Table is gaining some fashion among the technologists? We are a generation spoilt for choice and some of the creative minds have started applying the periodic table concept to different fields. Here are some interesting ones that I could find.
Another interesting one on the Data Visualization methods we see today, – which finds its way due to the proliferation of the many creative visualizations, which more often than not are really creative and veer away from the real message to convey.
Unfortunately getting rid of clutter and creativity were not the primary drivers for Mendeleyev and that’s not why he gained attention of his fellow scientists. Organizing the elements was done by so many others during his time. Where Mendeleyev stood out was in the scientific theory behind his grouping called The Periodic Law and using that he could even predict the quality of still unknown elements at that time. There were very few takers for his theory at the beginning. But, it gained acceptance with the discovery of new elements that possessed the qualities that Mendeleyev had predicted.
All the above ones on Technology are good examples on creativity in the way they help organize the clutter in a colorful grid, especially in our times of plenty and it also provides us a great opportunity to relive the basic chemistry we learnt in our school days. But, sticking to the concepts of periodic law, applying the same for Discoveries vs Inventions, which are mostly results of Evolution, are two different things. For that to be effective, you really need to the scientific approach of grouping the different entities by well-defined attributes they exhibit and use that to make even a prediction on the future, which is not a bad thing.
