The Periodic Table
Hello, I'm Hank Green.
Welcome to Crash Course Chemistry.
Today, we're talking about the most important table ever.
Not the table where they signed the Declaration of Independence, nor any table of contents, nor this table right here, nor the stone table of Aslan, Nay.
It is the periodic table of elements, a concise, information - dence catalog of all of the different sorts of atoms in the universe.
Today, I want to talk a little bit about the creation of this table, which is, to be clear, one of the crowning achievement of human thought.
To start out, thought, let's close our eyes and pretend.
Imagine you're in Siberia. And you're a thirteen-year-old boy.
And your father, who was a professor but had gone blind, leaving your family of more than ten brothers and sisters destitute, has just died.
I know, downer.
Your mom, to support the family, has re-opened an abandoned glassmaking factory in the small town where you live, largely because she wants to make enough money to send you to school someday.
A year passes-the factory burns down.
But your mom, she sees your potential, she knows that you have a keen scientific mind and will not see that squandered.
So, with your siblings out of the house and on their own, she packs up your belongings, straps them to a horse, and with you in tow, rides 1200 miles through the Ural Mountains on horseback to a university in Moscow.
There, on your behalf, she pleads earnestly and effectively, and they reject you.
So together, you ride another 400 miles to Saint Petersburg, to the school where your father had graduated as a scientist, and as luck, or extreme, insane, undeniably Russian persistence, would have it, they accept you, and your saddle-worn butt, as a pupil.
Your mother, having completed her mission, promptly dies.
