Ep. 131: The Periodic Table – Elements 11 to 20

March 31, 2024 Peter Jans

Intro

Hello and Welcome to this episode of the podcast, "The Mnemonic Tree", where we add a single mnemonic leaf to our Tree of Knowledge.

I’m Jans your Mnemonic Man and today's episode will be our first follow up, a follow up to episode 32 on the periodic table where we did the elements from 1 to 10. So, we are now going to tackle the next ten, from 11 to 20.

Now, the first mnemonic if you remember was Hear ye, Hear ye, Listen to BBC News On Friday Night which stood for hydrogen, helium, lithium beryllium, boron carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, fluorine, and neon. So, with this one I’ve made an attempt to follow that story line onto the next mnemonic. Also, because we did the Wikipedia article on the periodic table in the first one, for this one, we will read the Wikipedia article on the man that put a version of the periodic table of elements together, Dmitri Mendeleev.

There are now 118 elements on the periodic table, from hydrogen which is number one to the last one Oganesson at 118. These elements are organised into rows which are called periods and columns which are called groups. Which gives us a total of seven periods and 18 groups. The periods indicate the number of electron shells an element atom possess, while the groups indicate similar chemical properties.

So, with that brief overview today’s episode, as mentioned will be on elements 11 to 20 on the periodic table.

With that being said, we will begin with a summary from Wikipedia.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Periodic_table_large.svg

Wikipedia Summary

Dmitri Ivanovich Mendeleev (sometimes romanized as Mendeleyev, Mendeleiev, or Mendeleef; English: /ˌmɛndəlˈeɪəf/ MEN-dəl-AY-əf;[2] Russian: Дмитрий Иванович Менделеев, romanized: Dmitry Ivanovich Mendeleyev,[a] IPA: [ˈdmʲitrʲɪj ɪˈvanəvʲɪtɕ mʲɪnʲdʲɪˈlʲejɪf] ⓘ; 8 February [O.S. 27 January] 1834 – 2 February [O.S. 20 January] 1907) was a Russian chemist and inventor. He is best known for formulating the Periodic Law and creating a version of the periodic table of elements. He used the Periodic Law not only to correct the then-accepted properties of some known elements, such as the valence and atomic weight of uranium, but also to predict the properties of three elements that were yet to be discovered (germanium, gallium and scandium).

Mendeleev was born in the village of Verkhnie Aremzyani, near Tobolsk in Siberia, to Ivan Pavlovich Mendeleev (1783–1847) and Maria Dmitrievna Mendeleeva (née Kornilieva) (1793–1850).[3][4] Ivan worked as a school principal and a teacher of fine arts, politics and philosophy at the Tambov and Saratov gymnasiums.[5] Ivan's father, Pavel Maximovich Sokolov, was a Russian Orthodox priest from the Tver region.[6] As per the tradition of priests of that time, Pavel's children were given new family names while attending the theological seminary,[7] with Ivan getting the family name Mendeleev after the name of a local landlord.[8]

Mendeleev was raised as an Orthodox Christian, his mother encouraging him to "patiently search divine and scientific truth".[21] His son would later inform that he departed from the Church and embraced a form of "romanticized deism".[22]

In 1849, his mother took Mendeleev across Russia from Siberia to Moscow with the aim of getting Mendeleev enrolled at the Moscow University.[8] The university in Moscow did not accept him. The mother and son continued to Saint Petersburg to the father's alma mater. The now poor Mendeleev family relocated to Saint Petersburg, where he entered the Main Pedagogical Institute in 1850. After graduation, he contracted tuberculosis, causing him to move to the Crimean Peninsula on the northern coast of the Black Sea in 1855. While there, he became a science master of the 1st Simferopol Gymnasium. In 1857, he returned to Saint Petersburg with fully restored health.

Between 1859 and 1861, he worked on the capillarity of liquids and the workings of the spectroscope in Heidelberg. Later in 1861, he published a textbook named Organic Chemistry.[26] This won him the Demidov Prize of the Petersburg Academy of Sciences.[26]

Mendeleev became a professor at the Saint Petersburg Technological Institute and Saint Petersburg State University in 1864,[26] and 1865, respectively. In 1865, he became a Doctor of Science for his dissertation "On the Combinations of Water with Alcohol". He achieved tenure in 1867 at St. Petersburg University and started to teach inorganic chemistry while succeeding Voskresenskii to this post;[26] by 1871, he had transformed Saint Petersburg into an internationally recognized center for chemistry research.

Extracted from: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dmitri_Mendeleev#Activities_beyond_chemistry]

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Huge_Mendeleev_periodic_table_of_elements_in_Dubna.jpg

Mnemonic

The Periodic Table – Elements 11 to 20 Mnemonic – Story May Also Shock People, Saving Cash After Pricey Children

(Picture this as a follow up to BBC News mnemonic for the elements 1 to 10. And this is the headline story on BBC News, which is about saving cash after pricey children)

11. Sodium (NA)

12. Magnesium (Mg)

13. Aluminium (Al)

14. Silicon (Si)

15. Phosphorus (P)

16. Sulphur (S)

17. Chlorine (Cl)

18. Argon (Ar)

19. Potassium (K)

20. Calcium (Ca)

Five Fun Facts

1. To be able to weigh each element scientists would use battery polarity.

A current was passed through several solutions which would break the elements up to atoms. The batteries polarity would then separate those atoms which would then be collected and weighed.

Now I was going to tell you a joke about how oxygen and potassium went on a date and everything went OK! But I was really looking for a joke on the periodic table, but unfortunately all of them argon!

2. The genius of Mendeleyev was that he actually left gaps in his original table in the prediction that these elements would be discovered. By estimating element properties, he correctly predicted germanium, scandium and gallium

3. To the antithesis of his genius Mendeleyev also used this system to deny the existence of other elements. These other elements included the now “Noble Elements” such as radon, neon, krypton, helium, argon, and xenon, which I’m sure we all remember the mnemonic for, which was “RaNK HOAX”.

4. The periodic table is periodically revised by The International Union of Pure Applied Chemistry. The most recent revision was published in December 2018

5. Today there are 24 other elements that are primarily produced synthetically. Technetium was the first element to be synthesized and it was first produced in 1937

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Periodic_shell.jpg

Three Question Quiz

Q.1. Almost 75% of the periodic table is composed of what? Options are metals, actinides or gases

Q.2. What is the name of the element that is named after Albert Einstein?

Q.3. Mendeleyev's periodic table was designed in the order of increasing atomic weight. The modern periodic table is designed according to increasing atomic what?

Bonus Q. List all symbols for the elements from eleven to twenty?

11. Sodium

12. Magnesium

13. Aluminium

14. Silicon

15. Phosphorus

16. Sulphur

17. Chlorine

18. Argon

19. Potassium

20. Calcium

Mnemonic Recap

The Periodic Table – Elements 11 to 20 Mnemonic – Story May Also Shock People, Saving Cash After Pricey Children

(Picture this as a follow up to BBC News mnemonic for the elements 1 to 10. And this is the headline story on BBC News, which is about saving cash after pricey children)

11. Sodium (NA)

12. Magnesium (Mg)

13. Aluminium (Al)

14. Silicon (Si)

15. Phosphorus (P)

16. Sulphur (S)

17. Chlorine (Cl)

18. Argon (Ar)

19. Potassium (K)

20. Calcium (Ca)

Three Question Quiz Answers

Q.1. Almost 75% of the periodic table is composed of what? Options are metals, actinides or gases

A. Metals

Q.2. What is the name of the element that is named after Albert Einstein?

A. Einsteinium

Q.3. Mendeleyev's periodic table was designed in the order of increasing atomic weight. The modern periodic table is designed according to increasing atomic what?

A. Atomic number

Bonus Q. List all symbols for the elements from eleven to twenty.

21. Sodium (Na)

22. Magnesium (Mg)

23. Aluminium (Al)

24. Silicon (Si)

25. Phosphorus (P)

26. Sulphur (s)

27. Chlorine (Cl)

28. Argon (Ar)

29. Potassium (K)

30. Calcium (Ca)