Monday, August 24, 2015

Medieval Chemistry


If you ever studied science in school, you were introduced to the famous and endlessly useful Periodic Table of the Elements, which arranges the known elements by their atomic numbers, and groups them according to their general properties. The first generally-accepted Periodic Table was developed by Russian scientist Dmitri Mendeleev in 1869, and the current version looks like this:


Now, while the Periodic Table has many uses for scientists, it also lends itself to modification for humorous purposes. For instance, back in August of 2008, I featured a version I'd found called "Dapperstache's Periodic Table of Awesoments," which you can revisit here, and Miss Cellania wrote an article for Mental Floss in 2013 that featured nine Periodic Table parodies, with links to many others.

But one of the best versions I've seen in a long time is this one, which popped up recently as a Facebook post from one of my friends - it's Ye Olde Periodic Table:


Yes, it was much easier to be a chemist back then, when there were only four elements to worry about, and no bothersome oversight by the jack-booted government thugsTM of the FDA and the EPA digging through all your test results and worrying about job-killingTM things like safety and the environment ...


Have a good day. It's element-ary, after all.

More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo

4 comments:

eViL pOp TaRt said...

So there's a Canadian Periodic Table too? It beats the old, 4-element one, and it's a lot easier to remember than Mendeleev's one. This was an enjoyable post today, Bilbo!

Rammer Jammer Yellow Hammer said...

Periodic Tables are awesome! A great piece.

Linda Kay said...

Great post, but not being into science I had never heard of a Periodic Table. I'm so much more well-informed today. Is that you in the picture?

Mike said...

A movie identified an ancient fifth element.