For my nephew

January 20, 2021 | 10 Comments


One of the elements we are currently adding to our pages as part of my new course Sketchbook Design is “Maps, Diagrams and Charts”  and I add a particular chart in mind…

My 7 year old nephew is really into the Periodic Table at the moment, so I thought it would be fun to draw it and surprise him! However, on Saturday, at a family picnic, at one point when we were discussing some elements (of the Periodic Table not my Sketchbook Design course!) he said “Aunty Liz, can you draw the Periodic Table?”

And so on Monday I sat down to do it. I can’t remember much from my Chemistry lessons in High School so it was really cool to spend an hour learning about something ‘new’. I found some simple explanations for children on YouTube and was listening to them while I worked on my own version. On the topic of YouTube, my nephew can sing the entire Periodic Table song by heart. Unbelievable!


In terms of drawing this table – it’s a little rough, but suits the overall feel of my sketchbook pages. 🙂

I would have liked it to be a little bigger and to have used a fine nib for the element number so that I could have fitted in the names… but maybe that would not have been enough to fit ‘Darmstadtium’ in one of the cells. I should have also cleaned my palette! Maybe next time I use a large (A4) landscape sketchbook I will do another version and include all the names!


I’m looking forward to having more serious conversations with my nephew now… and I’m really happy to have this page in my sketchbook. It’s super fun to have a record of his latest craze.
BTW I sketched a few pieces of the Periodic Table Jigsaw puzzle that he got for his birthday in September but drawing the whole table is more special!


So, I would love to hear from my readers…

Do you like the Periodic Table as well? why? Do you have a favourite element?

I would love to get some responses to share with my nephew – so thanks in advance!

 

10 Comments

  • My kids are partial to “locally discovered” elements, by the Scientists at Berkeley Labs. I had to look up the list 🙂 astatine, neptunium, plutonium, curium, americium, berkelium, californium, einsteinium, fermium, mendelevium, nobelium, lawrencium, dubnium, and seaborgium.

  • Alan Barbour says:

    I am an old chemist. I never heard of the periodic table song, but in my junior year of college we had an inorganic chemistry class where we had to memorize the entire table (which was then a bit smaller than now). It really wasn’t difficult by that time. On exams we would be given a particular element and be required to fill in all the ones around it. I can’t remember if there was more than one such question per exam.

    Some of the early versions of the table are very interesting, and quite unlike the now standard version; but they had no way to measure atomic weights or atomic numbers–the tables were based on valence (the number of bonds that could be formed in various compounds of the element) and physical properties.

    I remember when Nobelium was announced. It was the first of the “new” elements to be discovered at a place other than the University of California at Berkeley, and the nuclear physicists there were said to jokingly refer to it as Nobeliveium until its existence was confirmed.

    I also remember the “Organic Chemist’s Periodic Table of the Elements.” Each element is represented by a block of height reflecting its importance. It resembles a mountain, with carbon as the peak, surrounded by lower peaks of hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, phosphorus, sulphur, etc. and quickly trailing away into lowlands of the noble gases and metallic elements.

  • Alan D Barbour says:

    I went looking for the Organic Chemist’s Periodic Table of the Elements that I recall, using Google Images– and didn’t find it–but I did find some others, including the Periodic Table of the Stock Market:

    http://icanhasscience.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/Period-Table-of-the-Stock-Market.jpg

  • Thallium: TI on Periodic Table

    Trivia: did you know?? Weapons grade/commercial grade Prussian Blue is the antidote for Tallium poisoning. Used to/may still be in rat poison. Because I’m an artist it could be my favorite!

    Source: Dateline TV

    Brenda Staresnick, watercolor artist, San Marco’s TX USA

  • Jan Koehler says:

    I too love the Periodic Table!! It’s orderly structure and the fact that all matter on earth is comprised of elements contained in this neat table is endlessly fascinating. My favourite element is Au = Gold after visiting the Perth Mint and seeing the 1 tonne gold coin in the entrance there and a demo of gold being melted and poured into ingot molds!

  • Sinead Turner says:

    The first lesson in High School Science in 1969 was to memorise the (then) complete periodic table. Unfortunately I didn’t discover the Tom Lehrer patter song “The Elements” until much much later – it is delightful, though of limited use unless you have excellent diction! Your nephew might enjoy listening to it.

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