Pop quiz: What element in the periodic table is represented by “H”? “Mo”? How about “Og”?
Okay, we’ll tell you. “H” represents hydrogen, the lightest element and building block of life. “Mo” is for Molybdenum, which has been officially recognized and named since the 1780s and used for many purposes, such as manufacturing. “Og” is actually the last numbered element on the periodic table, number 118, Oganesson, which was synthesized by scientists in 2002 but not named until November 2016. Did you pass? Don’t worry, we won’t tell your high school chemistry teacher.
There’s no getting around it: the periodic table is a veritable wall of info. Nine families, 118 elements, a lot of blanks that have had to be filled in by laboratories. How chemists remember all this stuff is incredible.
One chemistry professor, in particular, is encouraging his students (and beyond) to get more into the periodic table by inventing a brand-new Guinness World Record.
Vilas Pol is a faculty member who teaches undergraduate chemistry courses at Purdue University. When he noticed some of his students not appreciating the importance of the periodic table and elements in everyday life (they ARE the very smallest bits of our being and universe, after all), he aimed to change that. His idea? Create and present a new world record to the Guinness Book, a record where Pol attempts to put all 118 elements in table-accurate order as quickly as possible.
At first, Pol contacted Guinness with the idea of trying to write down the periodic table as quickly as possible. Guinness answered with a suggestion: how about arranging 118 tiles, each one representing an element? Pol was daunted, but agreed. He went to work personally crafting a set of tiles. Of course, the tiles have only the element’s abbreviation, not the atomic number which would immediately give away the order of the elements.
Other restrictions set by Guinness include completing the challenge in under 10 minutes, and with only three tries. They gave Pol three weeks to prepare.
On his first attempt, he reports his time at around 20 minutes. After three times a day practicing for every day of those three weeks, Pol felt prepared. His students were cheering him on, and his family backed him up.
The big day arrived. On August 15, 2018, Pol’s third attempt took 8 minutes and 36.25 seconds. A record was set, to cheers and relief from the onlookers.
Pol seems pretty confident he could beat his record if he wanted, but he donated his homemade tile board to his students, hoping they will take up the challenge next.
This is actually a special time to accomplish such a win for the periodic table. The year 2019 marks the 150th anniversary of Dmitri Mendeleev’s first periodic table designs. 2019 has been dubbed “The Year of the Periodic Table” by the American Chemical Society to celebrate the big anniversary. Now Pol will contribute an important record, to boot.