Product Idea |

The Periodic Table

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The Periodic Table is the iconic image that most people remember from their chemistry at school. This model, built from simple LEGO bricks, could be a great tool to help people learn more about the elements, their chemical reactions and atomic structure. In addition the parts can be re-used in different formats to show simple molecules, for example the added images show representations of normal Table Salt (Sodium Chloride) and Water (H2O).

The model shows each of the named 118 elements with their chemical symbol and the primary chemical groups are colour coded to show the Alkali Metals, Alkali Earth Metals, Transition Metals, Post Transition Metals, Metalloids, Non Metals, Halogen, Noble Gases, Lanthanoids and Actinoids.

This model follows the table as presented by IUPAC (International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry) including proposed names for elements 113, 115,117 and 118 from 2016. Much more complexity can be added to the table but increase the brick count and potentially reduce the ability to re-use the parts for molecules if it leads to more colours of bricks in smaller numbers. Similarly I felt that using bricks to form the letters in chemical symbols would improve learning more than stickers which could include much more data.

Options that LEGO could consider include breaking the table down to sell it in groups or having a sticker for the back of each element tile with additional data about atomic weight etc. Similarly LEGO could include supporting technical information so that this could be used as a teaching aid.

I hope you like this model. It is a bit different to my normal models but I hope my followers are OK with this.

The model has 2756 bricks


 

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