Wednesday, February 8 marked the 183rd birthday of Dmitri Ivanovich Mendeleev, the father of the Periodic Table of the Elements. What better way to celebrate than with a deep dive into TED-Ed’s Periodic Videos, “A lesson about every single element on the periodic table.” As an example, here’s the video for Fluorine, an incredibly reactive element that, “most chemists are too frightened to work with.” Like any good chemistry video, lots of things are set on fire.

David Crotty

David Crotty

David Crotty is a Senior Consultant at Clarke & Esposito, a boutique management consulting firm focused on strategic issues related to professional and academic publishing and information services. Previously, David was the Editorial Director, Journals Policy for Oxford University Press. He oversaw journal policy across OUP’s journals program, drove technological innovation, and served as an information officer. David acquired and managed a suite of research society-owned journals with OUP, and before that was the Executive Editor for Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press, where he created and edited new science books and journals, along with serving as a journal Editor-in-Chief. He has served on the Board of Directors for the STM Association, the Society for Scholarly Publishing and CHOR, Inc., as well as The AAP-PSP Executive Council. David received his PhD in Genetics from Columbia University and did developmental neuroscience research at Caltech before moving from the bench to publishing.

Discussion

4 Thoughts on "Meet the Elements"

Interesting, but not nearly as funny as Tom Lehrer’s Elements song! 🙂

Hard to watch this without thinking of Jesse Pinkman filling a bathtub with hydrofluoric acid.

I love that his screen saver in the background says “Green Chemistry!!!”

Comments are closed.