Homeschool High School Chemistry: A Historical and Artistic Look at the Periodic Tables of the Elements

Twenty-ish years ago, when I was studying for my Master's in Library Science, I took a class entitled The Organization and Representation of Knowledge and Information.

It was... just as fussy and pedantic of a class as you'd imagine from the title. I thought my instructor was fussy and pedantic, I thought the structure of the assignments was fussy and pedantic, and after two or three years of English grad school by that time, I found the endless class debates over the philosophy of how to organize and represent some specific piece of knowledge or information to be just the worst kind of parody of grad school education.

I just looked, and the school DOES still offer that exact class, but the syllabus is completely different! It looks so practical now! I might have come out of that class with a genuinely marketable skill, dang it!

ANYWAY, I was not my best self in that class (actually, I might have been in the early stages of pregnancy in that class, now that I think if it. Wonder if that had anything to do with my mindset, ahem?), and the only thing that I really remember from it is that there are infinite ways to organize and represent knowledge and information. The trick is to figure out the best one!

So when my teenager and I took what I knew would be the last of our numerous pass-throughs of the Periodic Table of the Elements this past school year, I decided to shake up our usual look at the Table as an unquestioned artifact by instead exploring its history, and some of the MANY variations the structure has taken in the quest to find the absolutely most perfect iteration. 

This was a great topic to move into soon after our lesson on alchemy, because scientists have been trying to organize the elements since before the only elements were earth, air, water, and fire! Here's one of the beautiful tables that we looked at first:

Tria Prima image via Mark R. Leach

Most of our Periodic Tables were taken from the Internet Database of Periodic Tables run by Mark R. Leach. With every table that we looked at, it was interesting to discuss why that table was arranged the way it was--what organizational problems it tried to solve, what patterns it tried to create--as well as what organizational issues that table caused, leading to yet another iteration. And of course one mustn't neglect the artistic merits of each table!

The teenager and I are both hands-on learners, so, for instance, we both liked this table from 1814:

Wollaston's Physical Slide Rule of Chemical Equivalents image via Mark R. Leach

It's a Periodic Table because it's ordered based on the weights of the elements, but you can see why it would be somewhat impractical for many purposes. What schoolchild could afford it? Who could manage carrying it around for ready reference?

Emerson's Helix from 1911 is prettier, and much more practical to put one's hands on:

Emerson's Helix image via Mark R. Leach

But you can already see it's not going to work with as many elements as we have today.

THIS Periodic Table of the Elements, though--THIS one really gets into the meat of what personally interests me about how the elements are organized:

Rare Earth Pop Out Periodic Table image via Mark R. Leach

There is just not a practical way--one that also makes sense!--to get all those elements into one nice, neat, lined-up table. Something always wants to stick out!

I really like this 3D pyramid from 1983; it's organized so that each side represents one type of atomic orbital... mostly. 

Or you can organize the elements based on your own usage of them: this 3D cube has the elements sized "in approximate proportion to their importance in cement chemistry."

And to be honest, I can't work out how this table from 2008 even works, or how one is meant to read it:

Angular Form of the Periodic Table image via Mark R. Leach

It's VERY pretty, though! I would happily work it as a puzzle!

Since, alas, we do not have an Angular Form of the Periodic Table puzzle, we happily reworked our good old 1,000-piece PTOE puzzle that we've reworked many times before--

I had thought that it might interest the teenager to create an art piece organizing the elements in any unique way that she chose--a Minecraft creation, perhaps, or a menagerie. A PowerPoint organized by vibes. A series of ceramic vessels. She wasn't feeling inspired by the prompt, though--it's possible that I've brought up the PTOE maybe a couple of too many times over the past 12 years, ahem--and part of the fun of being a homeschooler who chooses your own adventures is also NOT choosing adventures, so an artistic, unique Periodic Table did not become part of her Art of Chemistry portfolio.

Instead, we colored ourselves anchor charts of the table that we've all agreed to know and love today, internalizing, as we did, how this particular knowledge and information is organized and represented:

While we worked we listened to The Disappearing Spoon on audiobook, because I'll be damned if I don't sneak in just a LITTLE more Periodic Table content before this last year of homeschooling ends!

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To Philadelphia and Back in 22 Hours

How are we already here again? Two years ago exactly, my older kid and I were on a whirlwind tour to see one last college before she made up her mind about where she was going to go to school. 

That feels so long ago, but also like it was yesterday, you know? That kid I took on her last college tour before Decision Day was still a kid. Just two years later she's still my baby, but she's no longer a child. She finished growing up there at college when I wasn't there to see it.

Now I'm supporting my younger kid as she makes the same kind of agonizing decision, and she's simultaneously the most grown-up, confident, sophisticated human I've ever had the privilege to know and also my precious four-year-old in a thrifted velvet dress, butterfly wings strapped to her back, mashing dandelion flowers into a pretend pie in her backyard mud kitchen.

How can I let that tiny little sprite out of my sight, much less drop her off and leave her at a college 700 miles away? Wasn't it just last week that she sat on Santa's lap and told him that she wanted a kitten for Christmas?

How about we just try not to think that far ahead for a bit. Let's just think about not forgetting where in this massive Economy Lot we're leaving the damn car:

Then we'll just think about the following:

• airport security
• napping during the flight
• finding the SEPTA station at the Philadelphia International Airport and buying rail tickets for later (the station in the college town apparently doesn't have its own ticket kiosk? Because... reasons?)
• booking and riding in my very first Lyft (super smooth process, but our driver did treat us to an anti-Philadelphia screed while also spurning the highway in favor of only surface streets, making the ride take so long that the Lyft app sent me a push notification asking if I was okay or was I in peril)
• getting dropped off at the campus gates and then immediately hoofing it to the nearest Starbucks for caffeine and a breakfast wrap
• taking one sip of my chocolate cream cold brew and realizing as soon as the stimulant hit my brain that we were about to be late for the Welcome event
• hoofing it back to campus at double-speed

And then, of course, exploring this beautiful college campus and learning about the school and meeting some students and staff and watching my kid make friends with the other kids on the tour. 

This school has a literal cloister why?

The kid is more of a sucker for the Collegiate Gothic architectural style than I am. Who wouldn't want to have class inside a castle?

Just between us, and knowing what y'all know about this kid, I'm pretty sure the fact that this school is basically a poorly-disguised cult for worshipping Athena is its biggest draw for her...

Statue of Athena, at which the students leave offerings. Tell me it's not a cult.

When we were given a little free time, the kid and I OBVIOUSLY beelined straight to the library. College libraries are some of my favorite campus buildings to explore!

Check out the original statue of Athena up high where students from the rival college can't reach her, and also plaster casts taken from the genuine Parthenon metopes on display at the British Museum. I'm just gonna leave this right here.

So envious that they have a whole room of puzzles! They also have a craft club with its own permanent, dedicated studio and an art club, also with its own permanent, dedicated studio. 

I read this book in grad school!

I'm telling you, the owl iconography is INTENSE. I kind of wanted to ask how this impacted their enrollment of students from certain Native American nations, but I'd already asked soooo many weird questions that I felt I should probably leave some weird questions for other people to ask.

Tell me that this is not a shocking number of owls, though?!?

I am SO glad that I'm not seventeen years old and trying to figure out where I want to go to college. The amazing choices that she has are a blessing, a luxury, and a direct result of the hard work this kid has done and the phenomenal person she is, but it's also an awful burden to have to decide.

Let's spend the next few hours not thinking about it, and instead thinking about how to navigate the SEPTA system, especially because Jefferson Station booted us out into a shopping mall with no discernible exit, and it took us at least 20 minutes to find our way out to the street. Also, while I was standing at one of the big maps and figuring out our route, a kind stranger came over to gently point out that I was tracing the trolley line and not the rail line. Because apparently Philadelphia also has trolleys!

I'd wanted to see Chinatown, browse a couple of bookstores, walk around the Independence sites, etc., and we had plenty of time to do that, but I'd neglected to take into account that by the time we got downtown we'd have been up and at 'em for approximately 14 hours, and shockingly for me when confronted with a tourist site, I was starting to fade.

Imagine! ME!!! Forgetting to so much as take a snapshot of the Chinatown Gate as we walked under it! Unwilling to walk a few extra blocks over to the bookstore I'd Pinned! Too tired to make the extra effort to take a close-up photo of Independence Hall!

Not even the facts of my own exhausted near-tears and the kid who dances on pointe six days a week admitting that her feet hurt could stop me from paying my respects to Ben, Deborah, and Francis Franklin, though:

That was the last tourist thing we did, though. After that we trudged straight back to Jefferson Station, caught the train back to the airport, did the whole security theatre dance number one more time, and collapsed at our gate, where the kid proceeded to sleep as soundly as if she'd been in her bed back home for the remaining two hours until our flight.

I, on the other hand, finished my book (Peter Darling), started another (Beartown), and discovered that, gasp, the Philadelphia International Airport only stocks Pepsi products?!? NOOO!!! Mama needs her Diet Sprite!

I reluctantly nursed my... Starry? WTF is a STARRY?!?... and made it last until we got back to our home airport, at which point I'd forgotten that I'd even taken a photo of our parking spot. Thank goodness for the teenager, who just flat-out remembered where we parked in her head, and who loudly sang our personal mash-up of "Party Rock Anthem," "California Girls," and the entire Percy Jackson musical with me to keep me awake for the drive home. 

I want her to go to absolutely the BEST college, y'all, and also I never want her to leave my side for a second. 

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Girl Scout Troop Trip to Boston: On Friday, We Explore the Aquarium and Attend the Ballet

Our last full day in Boston was another sausage day in the hotel breakfast room. Moral of the story: eat ALL the bacon when it's there, for you never know when it will be your last bacon.

We had a bit of a lighter itinerary on this day, because I wasn't sure how long each of our planned activities would take. First up: the bus to Airport Station, the subway to Aquarium Station, and then a short walk to the New England Aquarium!

My college kid and I have been low-key obsessed with eels after listening to this Gastropod episode together--

--so we were both delighted to see a real, live eel minding its own eely business:

Here is more interesting information about eels, because I know that now you, too, care a LOT about them.

Also, a scuba diver:

And seahorses! 

Did you know that seahorses are extremely challenging to keep happy and healthy in captivity? Their food pretty much has to boop them on the nose before they'll bite it, and if anything upsets them in the slightest they'll simply die about it. But, of course, it's not like the oceans themselves are generally humane places for sea creatures to live anymore, either. They like having stuff to hang onto, though, so this little dude seems pretty okay with life:

This piranha and I became best friends:

And here's a super rare blue lobster:

I'm also low-key obsessed with lobsters ever since that time I drove through the Maine woods for several hours while listening to an hours-long radio program on their local NPR station about the dwindling local lobster industry. Thanks to global warming, the range of the lobster is steadily moving northward, so much so that eventually New England lobsters will no longer be an American product!

Along with seahorses, jellyfish are my other favorite ocean creature to watch:

After a long morning at New England Aquarium, the troop walked over to Faneuil Hall Marketplace for a late lunch--

My cheesesteak was so bland that I wondered if I'd missed a sauce station somewhere, but I was starving so I hoovered it down anyway.

--and to finish everyone's Junior Ranger badges!

Because Junior Ranger badges aren't the comfiest thing to wear on the back of one's Girl Scout vest, I bought Boston National Historic Park patches for the kids to wear, instead. And I bought myself the 1993 National Park Passport Stamp Set because it features Boston National Park. That was one of the two souvenirs I purchased on this trip!

Does it count as a souvenir if a kid buys a bunch of candy, but then eats all of that candy before she gets home? Because that happened, too...

At one point I was supposed to be meeting up with my own two kids in Faneuil Hall Marketplace, but I lost them. I texted them to ask where they were, they texted back to ask where *I* was, and in response I sent them this photo:

The teenager arrived within a minute.

I hadn't been sure about how long visiting the aquarium and finishing up the Junior Ranger badges would take, so when everyone had their Junior Ranger badges in hand by 2pm, we had tons of free time left until our 7:30 Boston Ballet performance of Cinderella. The kids had a mini meeting and decided that people could head off to do their own thing until then, and we divvied up the chaperones to support them. I ended up with my own two kids and an afternoon agenda of bookstores and the Boston Massacre Site.

The kids were navigating, though, so first we walked a complete circle and saw Faneuil Hall again!

And then we figured out how to simply put away our phones and stay on the Freedom Trail path, and that led us handily right to the Old State House--

--and the Boston Massacre Site:

We'd only missed its anniversary by exactly ten days!

We were actually walking towards Old South Meeting House when we saw Commonwealth Books in a little alley to our left, and we ended up staying there for a looooooong time:

Here's the teenager examining a book that I excitedly brought to her and which I would actually end up buying. It's an 1899 first-edition book about our collective Special Interest, Gilles de Rais! The author definitely thinks he's a serial killer, which I do NOT, buuut the book has handmade pages, many of which remain uncut, and is in overall beautiful condition and a total steal at $35. I'm not really the book collector that the teenager is, but I couldn't pass up such a lovely copy on one of my favorite topics:

We had quite the trek over to the next bookstore I really wanted to see, but it was worth it because Porter Square Books was the BEST bookstore I think I've ever been in! It was super comfy with nice bathrooms (yay!), and check out the awesome displays:

This one was a display of each of the Boston Bruins as a book:

Lol at these poor guys!

I learned here that there's a new sequel to The One and Only Ivan! The One and Only Ruby is on hold for me at the library as we speak.

Fun fact: my college kid STILL won't read The One and Only Ivan! She says it's because it's "overhyped," but you and I both know it's because it has animals that are sad inside it. 

Even after all the wandering and candy eating and bookshopping, we still had time for one last stroll along the waterfront--

--and then just one more quick visit back to Granary Burial Ground because the college kid hadn't seen it on this trip yet and *I* hadn't seen Paul Revere's grave!!!

The burial ground was closed by the time we got there, so I Google Imaged what Paul Revere's grave looked like, then we peered at the burial ground through the bars of the fence until we spotted it. Success!!!

Time to go to the ballet, then!

Citizens Opera House is in walking distance of Granary Burial Ground, and it is the prettiest building I have ever been in. The auditorium is absolutely stunning, and I didn't even think to get a photo of the ceiling, which is even prettier!

The ballet was also the prettiest thing I've ever seen! I really thought that I'd seen myself some ballet, with all the university productions I've been to, but whoah. I. Have seen. NOTHING compared to this. I barely even followed the fairly simple plot of "Cinderella," I was so enchanted by just the sights and sounds and pretty dancing. My only regret is that they only showed Cinderella's carriage for, like, five seconds, and it was the prettiest part of the entire ballet!

Interestingly, the ballet had the traditional casting of male dancers in the roles of Cinderella's step-sisters, but they didn't do any gender-related jokes with it, and the program had a blurb about their choice and the ballet's partnership with the Massachusetts Transgender Political Coalition. I've been much more aware of the possibilities of men dancing en pointe this year, as our local university has a male-bodied dancer who dances en pointe with the corps in university productions, and my partner, the teenager, and I went to a performance of Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo recently, also hosted by the university. Considering that this school year the teenager danced in a new Nutcracker reworked to remove its yellowface and heteronormative gender stereotyping, AND a new La Bayadere reworked to remove all its racist components, it feels like there is suddenly a revolution going on to wake up the world of ballet to all the possibilities of diversity in representation... just in time for my kid to graduate and miss out on most of it, dang it!

Ah, well. We can still enjoy the ballet world's growing diversity in representation from the audience, if not from the stage and the wings.

I think the kids were well-paid for their sophisticated choice of the ballet, in that they all seemed to have loved it, too. We left the opera house along with all the other fancy people--

--and went back by subway and bus to our comfy hotel rooms for one last night. 

The next day, it was one last hotel breakfast (still no bacon, sob!), one last airport shuttle, one last adventure through security, and two more flights home. The kids had each earned a Girl Scout badge, a Junior Ranger badge, and a fun patch. They'd navigated airports and TSA, mapped their way around Boston, figured out public transportation, and learned the social scripts for Italian bakeries, Chinese restaurants, and throwing tea into Boston Harbor. They ate new foods, tried new activities, talked to strangers, and visited a college campus. 

In other words, it was a perfect trip!

Here's our entire trip:

• Day 1 in Boston: Underground Donut Tour, Old North Church, Paul Revere's House, New England Holocaust Memorial, Boston City Hall Plaza Playground, Boston Public Market, and the North End
• Day 2 in Boston: Tours of Harvard and Simmons, Boston Tea Party Ships and Museum, and Chinatown
• Day 3 in Boston: New England Aquarium, Faneuil Hall, bookstores, and Boston Ballet

P.S. Want to follow along with my craft projects, books I'm reading, road trips to weird old cemeteries, looming mid-life crisis, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!