Periodic Tables at BCCE 2018

I’ve just gotten back from another wonderful BCCE conference (that’s Biennial Conference on Chemical Education) which was held at Notre Dame.  It was a great opportunity to catch up with some friends and colleagues that I’ve missed since leaving CSU last year to join the College at Brockport.

I presented some of the work I’ve been doing on 3D printed periodic tables and will blog about their construction and use in the near future.  There were some folks in the audience who wanted to get started right away with the objects, so I’ve posted them here on my website.  You can download a zip file that contains 19 tables (about 3 MB).

The zip file contains the following periodic trends:

  • atomic radii
  • ionization energies
  • electron affinities
  • electronegativities
  • human abundance
  • exceptions to the aufbau principle
  • absolute (Pearson) hardness

For the first four, there are four different sizes

  • 132×76 $mm^2$ table with title, f-block elements and symbols on each of the blocks.  These objects take about 3 hours to print.
  • 150×21 $mm^2$ table with no title, no f-block elements and symbols on each of the blocks.  These objects take about 2.5 hours to print.
  • 108×36 $mm^2$ table with no title, no f-block elements and symbols on each of the blocks.  These objects take about 2 hours to print.
  • 60×24 $mm^2$ table with no title, no f-block elements and no symbols on the blocks.  These objects take about 45 minutes to print.

As I build a collection of posts and materials for 3D-printed periodic tables, I will collect them here, so if you have interest in this project, bookmark that page.

3 thoughts on “Periodic Tables at BCCE 2018

  1. Thanks Bob for sharing at BCCE! I used the 3D periodic tables and the activity in my general chemistry (high school) classes this week. The activity really made them think. The ability to look at the 3D replicas is helpful when trying to get them to understand the trends and improve on their thinking skills.

    • Awesome – I’m so happy that you gave them a try and find it useful. Suggestions about use and improvements are most welcome. I just received word that my J. Chem. Ed. article on the 3D periodic tables has been accepted, so be on the lookout for more information.

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