Chemical celebration: marking 150 years of the periodic table
To mark the 150th anniversary of Dmitri Mendeleev creating the world’s periodic table, Robert P Crease examines the events that led to Mendeleev creating that first table – and traces how it developed over the decades that followed. Turns out, there have been hundreds of different versions – and the one we know and love today bears little resemblance to Mendeleev’s primitive early version. Elsewhere in the issue, find out about the strange interstellar object ‘Oumuamua – is it a comet or asteroid? – and explore the science of materials that can power a car and structure it too.
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