The Alternative Periodic Table

The Alternative Periodic Table is a new project from Matt Baker at UsefulCharts being funded through a Kickstarter campaign that ends on February 9, 2017. Act fast to get your copy and help support Matt!

From Matt:

Recently, I decided to tackle the most famous chart of all... the periodic table!  Considering that they just added 4 new elements, the timing could not be better. Anyway, here's what my version looks like:

You'll notice that it looks quite a bit different from the one you're used to. The video at the top of the page explains why. In short, the traditional periodic table is designed to emphasize the concept of valence, which is important for knowing which elements can easily combine with others to form compounds. In contrast, my alternative periodic table is designed to simply emphasize the way in which atoms are "built" (specifically, how electrons group together into shells and subshells). It's based on a design proposed by Edward Mazurs in the 1960s.

Like the traditional table, this alternative version can be used to find an elements name, number, atomic weight, state of matter, period, group, and block.  However, it also contains detailed information on electron configurations and the different types of electron subshells.

The Shapes of Snowflakes

The Shapes of Snowflakes is a fascinating categorization of crystal structures from Compound Interest, a chemistry site run by Andy Brunning in the UK. The site has a huge selection of chemistry and science related infographics.

In the Northern Hemisphere at least, the idealised vision of Christmas involves snow. Whilst no one snowflake is exactly the same as another, at least on a molecular level, scientists have none-the-less devised a system of classification for the many types of crystals that snow can form. This graphic shows the shapes and names of some of the groups of this classification.

The number of categories snow crystals can be categorised into has been steadily increasing over the years. In early studies in the 1930s, they were classified into 21 different shape-based categories; in the 1950s, this was expanded into 42 categories, in the 1960s to 80 categories, and most recently in 2013 to a staggering 121 categories.

Science meets Christmas!

You can also download a high-resolution PDF version.

The Interactive Purriodic Table of Internet Cats

The Interactive Purriodic Table of Internet Cats is a fun way to make sure you’re up-to-date on all of the top Internet cat memes!  Just in case that’s something important to you.

Earlier this week, we launched our latest ‘CATSterpiece’: The PURRiodic Table of Internet Cats. The PURRiodic Table is an amazing interactive graphic that serves as a reference point for the internet’s amazing cats.  Within these pages of the interweb, you can find everything you could ever want to know about your favorite feline, all wrapped-up in a baseball card style view (see image of Grumpy Cat below).

The interactive PURRiodic Table allows users to click on an image of any of 50 felines to learn their stories and view their social-media-star stats.  One of our favorite discoveries in putting the PURRiodic Table together was learning that more than half of these cats are rescue cats, which emphasizes the importance of animal adoptions.

Based on data from the Friskies 50: Most Influential Cats, the design obviously builds on the visualization idea of a periodic table.  Grouped by CATegory and ranked using the Friskies data set, each cat is clickable to get more information and all of their social media links.

This is definitely a design built to entertain audiences! The challenge for interactive infographics like this one is s share-ability and Avalaunch Media has done a fantastic job of preprogramming the social media sharing buttons on the infographic landing page to include a static image to include in posts.  

Thanks to Mat for sending in the link!

The Periodic Table of Fictional Minerals

Periodic tables are always helpful whether your in chemistry class, or reading an infographic that uses the idea! The Periodic Table of Fictional Minerals infographic from Buy Metal Online is about the many different fictional materials made up for tv shows, animated series, games, comic books, films, and literature.

This infographic we have made is a periodic table of metals, minerals and other elements that don’t exist, except in popular culture (notably films, TV shows, animated series, games, comic books and literature). The table is a fun play on the real-life periodic table and demonstrates just how many fictional elements there are.

Infographic images need to be able to be shared on their own, so the design should include the publisher’s logo, a copyright and the uRL to the original infographic landing page.

Thanks to David for sending in the link! 

The Periodic Table of Alcohol

The Periodic Table of Alcohol infographic does a good job of organizing popular alcoholic drinks in the periodic table design format.  Posted on Visual.ly by designer Mayra Magalhães (mayra.artes), 

This infographic shows important information about the most famous alcoholic beverages.

It’s unclear who the infographic was designed for.  The footer of the infographic lists BestCollegesOnline.com, the landing page on Visual.ly lists the Consumer Media Network and the URL actually links to CarInsurance.org.  It looks like this design is a modification of a design from 2011 done for Best Colleges Online called the College Student’s Guide to Boozing.  I’m guessing Mayra uploaded this recently to be included as a part of her design portfolio.

The infographic has been heavily shared, and I found this version on Laughing Squid, Business Insider, Popular Science, This is Happiness, Geekologie, and Gizmodo.

The Periodic Table of iPhones

The Periodic Table of iPhones infographic from scientificamerican.com (credit to Mark Hobbs at CNET) is an infographic about the materials it takes to create an iPhone.  A PDF version is available for download here.

Key ingredients in the iPhone include so-called rare-earth minerals, elements whose properties make it light, bright and loud.

The key message in this design is obviously a wanring to readers that their iPhones (let’s be honest, this applies to any modern smartphone) are using rare materials that may be hazardous and cause environmental problems when they are mined.  

The design ends abruptly, without an ending.  At the end should be a few key things that are missing:

• What’s the conclusion or call-to-action?  What should readers do now that they understand the key message?  Is the desired action recycling, participating in protests or choosing a different phone?
• Data sources?  This design accompanied a full-text article, but because infographics are shared independently they need to list the data sources for transparency and credibility.
• URL to the infographic landing page so readers can find the original story and full-size infographic?
• Copyright statement.

Found on visualoop!

Google's Periodic Table of APIs & Developer Tools

From the Google Code site, the Periodic Table of Google APIs & Developer Tools is a cool layout of the tools available.  It’s actually well designed table, so each element is clickable, and takes you to the information page about that particular API.

They’re color-coded by category, but many of them belong to multiple categories.  For example, the Google Analytics is part of Data APIs, Ads and Tools.  If you mouse over the category names at the top, all of the members of that category are highlighted below.

Found on Twitter through @illuminantceo

Periodic Table of Professional Cycling

Cosmo Catalano has created the Periodic Table of Professional Cycling for his cycling website, Cyclocosm.com.

The data lends itself surprisingly well to the periodic table format. Horizontal periods correspond closely to the prestige of each event, while vertical series indicate geographic location. Multi-day races are on the left hand side of the chart, one-day events on the right.

Thank Cosmo, via http://cyclocosm.com/periodic_table/

Circular Periodic Table of the Elements

Mohd Abubakr has redrawn the classic periodic table in a circular pattern to improve the proximity and relationships between the elements.

So why change it? According to Mohd Abubakr from Microsoft Research in Hyderabad, the table can be improved by arranging it in circular form. He says this gives a sense of the relative size of atoms--the closer to the centre, the smaller they are--something that is missing from the current form of the table. It preserves the periods and groups that make Mendeleev's table so useful. And by placing hydrogen and helium near the centre, Abubakr says this solves the problem of whether to put hydrogen with the halogens or alkali metals and of whether to put helium in the 2nd group or with the inert gases.

The strongest feedback about the new circular table is that you have to rotate it to read it.  Kind of a problem when you print a poster and post it in a classroom or a laboratory.  Although I think it's an easy thing to remedy by changing the orientation of the text.

Original post on Technology Review by MIT, and found on VizWorld by Randall Hand.

"Meet The Elements" - infographic video for kids

Found on BoingBoing and Information Aesthetics, a infographic music video, "Meet The Elements", from They Might Be Giants from their new kids album titled "Here Comes Science". Video directed by Feel Good Anyway.