memorizing periodic table

jonegil

has anyone ever memorized the periodic table?

ice109

mendeleev probably knew his from memory

jtbell

Anyone got a good mnemonic gimmick for all those rare-earth elements?

Moonbear

We had to memorize it when I was in junior high school. But, there were a lot less elements on it back then.

G01

I always considered the periodic table a kind of map. The point of having a map is so you DON'T need to memorize the globe!

mrjeffy321

I have not memorized the periodic table, but with time and experience one will naturally begin to remember the names/symbols/atomic weights of some of the most common elements. I have memorized a pretty good fraction of the periodic table…the elements I am always using.

I have heard from a friend that back when his dad was in college he had a test in which he was handed a blank periodic table and then asked to fill it in completely from memory…everything…including names/symbols/atomic number/atomic masses.
I really don’t see much educational value in that, but it is quite probably something which someone could do with enough practice (at least the names/symbols part I mean…the atomic weights is a different matter).

Back in high school chemistry we had to memorize the Alkali, Alkaline-Earth, Halogens, Nobel gasses, and few others elements and that was no big deal.

pmb_phy

My old physics professor has it memorized.

Pete

ice109

i think if you have it memorized it's easier to see the trends

Cyrus

What would be the point in memorizing such useless information? Thats the whole reason why its ordered in a table for you to look up.

mrjeffy321

Useless, I think not. I use the information on the periodic table everyday and it is not even my field of study.

I do think that there is some value in having portions of the periodic table memorized, just as one memorizes the multiplication tables, but I would not go so far as to advocate memorizing the entire table so that you could recreate it from scratch on a blank piece of paper.

Cyrus

Useless to memorize, I mean. You dont gain anything by memorizing a periodic table.

I hate the concept of memorization in general.

Cyrus

The table is already structured to show trends in orbitals and chemical properties.

cronxeh

Dinosaur days?



zzzzing

hey are you gonna reply to my pm?

ice109

like i've said before. having as much knowledge ready on a whim is very important. it could mean the difference between making the connection between two seemingly disparate things and making a discovery and completely missing something.

Astronuc

It is not necessary since one can readily find it on-line or perhaps print one and put it on the wall. But with time, one can learn the groups, e.g. alkali, alkali earth, halides and noble gases.

http://www.webelements.com/

dontdisturbmycircles

I have passively memorized atomic weights for some common elements in high school chem such as oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, iron, silver, blah the list goes on.

It definitely helps to a degree since you don't need to waste time looking everything up when you are doing calculations.

Moonbear

Spoken like a true engineer.

We had already hunted all the dinosaurs for a huge dino roast by then.

Gaahh...I forgot about that PM. Send me a reminder in a few weeks...I don't have any time to reply right now (I shouldn't even be here, but I need some breaks from grant writing to keep my brain from leaking out my ears).

I don't think memorizing the periodic table had any more value than any of the other things we had to memorize in junior high...nobody expects you to retain all of that information, but the ones you use most often stick, and the rest is at least familiar so you can generally look in the right places without having to look at every single element in the table to hunt for the one you need information on. Once you've finished learning the names of all the elements and their abbreviations (needed to find them on the periodic table), it really wasn't that big of a deal to remember them in the order listed on the table, which then gives you the atomic number and information on mass, structure, reactivity.

Mostly, memorizing something like that serves as a time-saver if you need the information often, and that's about it.