The Wooden Periodic Table Table

The Wooden Periodic Table Table
Yes, it really is a table. What, How, Why. Newest Samples! Updated 28 December, 2006.

Current count: 1102 samples, 92 elements, 103 minerals, 14 stories, 538 rotatable images, 293 smooth rotations, 57 videos, 56 sounds.

Collections, Spell with Elements game, Reaction balancing, How to collect elements,
Buy my beautiful photo periodic table.

Scientific American Science and Technology Awards 2004

Notable Links

My photographic periodic table poster is shipping!
The Brainiac Fiasco.
My museum displays and element sales.
My Popular Science column.
My 2002 Ig Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
Oliver Sacks came to visit!
Making hydrogen at home.

You can buy a copy of my high quality photographic periodic table poster!
Sizes available from laminated place mats up to posters four and half feet wide.
(Special note for Japanese orders 日本のお客様へ)

"Extraordinarily lovely. A wonderful
job both scientifically and artistically."
—satisfied poster customer

Size:

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7

Samples:

RGB 2

Maker's pictures of the RGB Set: More Info.

What is this thing anyway?

This website documents, in great depth, a large collection of chemical elements and examples of their applications, common and uncommon. Click any element tile above and you will find probably more than you ever wanted to know about that element. All these samples (well, at least the ones that fit) are stored in a wooden periodic table, by which I mean a physical table you can actually sit at, in my office at Wolfram Research.

I decided to build this table by accident in early 2002, as a result of a misunderstanding while reading Uncle Tungsten by Oliver Sacks. I won't bore you with the details here (see the Complete Pictorial History of the Wooden Periodic Table Table), but once it was finished I felt obligated to start finding elements to go in it (because under the name of each element in my table there is a sample area).

Then I started building a website to document all my samples, and that's when things really got out of hand. A few months later my little table won the 2002 Ig Nobel Prize in Chemistry, clearly the highest honor for which it is eligible.

Sensing an audience, I began to take the website more seriously, which led to my being asked to write a monthly column for Popular Science magazine, which I've now been doing continuously since the July 2003 issue.

Later I formed a most satisfying partnership with Max Whitby building high-end museum displays, selling element samples and sets, and filming video demonstrations of the chemical properties of the elements.

This website now contains the largest, most complete library of stock photographs of the elements and their applications available anywhere, as well as a large and growing collection of 3D images documenting hundreds of samples rotated through 360 degrees. Try clicking on some elements in the table above: I think you'll be surprised what's lurking behind those little tiles.

And if you like the pictures, you'll love the poster! In August, 2006, after four years of photography and months of assembling, I finally published a photographic periodic table poster based on my collection:

You can buy a copy right now! If you already have a copy and are curious to learn more about the individual samples pictured on it, this link will take you to a version of this home page showing all the samples from the poster. Then click any element to be taken to a description of that particular sample.

Notable Links

My periodic table poster.
My museum displays and element sales.
Oliver Sacks came to visit!
My Popular Science column.
TV Appearances
My 2002 Ig Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
Newspaper article about my table
Newspaper article about my museum displays
Radio Appearances
Me vs. Brainiac

Site search:

In case you're not seeing the tabletop image above, the following text links will take you to individual elements:

Actinium, Aluminum, Americium, Antimony, Argon, Arsenic, Astatine, Barium, Berkelium, Beryllium, Bismuth, Bohrium, Boron, Bromine, Cadmium, Calcium, Californium, Carbon, Cerium, Cesium, Chlorine, Chromium, Cobalt, Copper, Curium, Darmstadtium, Dubnium, Dysprosium, Einsteinium, Erbium, Europium, Fermium, Fluorine, Francium, Gadolinium, Gallium, Germanium, Gold, Hafnium, Hassium, Helium, Holmium, Hydrogen, Indium, Iodine, Iridium, Iron, Krypton, Lanthanum, Lawrencium, Lead, Lithium, Lutetium, Magnesium, Manganese, Meitnerium, Mendelevium, Mercury, Molybdenum, Neodymium, Neon, Neptunium, Nickel, Niobium, Nitrogen, Nobelium, Osmium, Oxygen, Palladium, Phosphorus, Platinum, Plutonium, Polonium, Potassium, Praseodymium, Promethium, Protactinium, Radium, Radon, Rhenium, Rhodium, Rubidium, Ruthenium, Rutherfordium, Samarium, Scandium, Seaborgium, Selenium, Silicon, Silver, Sodium, Strontium, Sulfur, Tantalum, Technetium, Tellurium, Terbium, Thallium, Thorium, Thulium, Tin, Titanium, Tungsten, Uranium, Vanadium, Xenon, Ytterbium, Yttrium, Zinc, Zirconium, 111, 112, 113, 114, 115, 116, 117, 118.