In the wee hours of the late 17th century, Isaac Newton could be found locked up in his laboratory prodding the secrets of nature. Giant plumes of green smoke poured from cauldrons of all shapes and ...

I highly recommend Wonderful Life with the Elements as a companion to the science classroom. Our world, everything we know, can be distilled into 188 elements. The very thought is fascinating in its ...

Would it surprise you to know that the periodic table, as we know it, isn’t the first table of elements? That even the order of the elements has changed from its original structure? Like many other ...

Eric Scerri's delightful "The Periodic Table: Its Story and Its Significance" follows the 1969 classic by J. W. Spronsen, "The Periodic System of Chemical Elements," but is a different treatment of ...

Would it surprise you to know that the periodic table, as we know it, isn’t the first table of elements? That even the order of the elements has changed from its original structure? Like many other ...

The story of the fifteenth element began in Hamburg, in 1669. The unsuccessful glassblower and alchemist Hennig Brandt was trying to find the philosopher’s stone, a mythical substance that could turn ...

Most of the time we don't think about the periodic table. Individual elements are always important—gold, oxygen, aluminum—but we rarely consider the table as a whole. It just hangs on the wall where ...

Understanding how a small, gas-phase molecule containing an actinide atom reacts with other molecules helps us better understand the chemistry of heavy elements. These elements are often available in ...

Where were you when humans first set foot on the moon? When the Berlin Wall came down? When the US Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage across the country? People tend to remember where they were ...