At one point, while drowning in research for The Disappearing Spoon, I could pretty much name every element on the periodic table, in order. I was more than happy to let this "talent" lapse, ...

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When you see the periodic table, what comes to mind? The pieces on a Scrabble board? Maybe you think about your high school chemistry class. Maybe you think of the colorful table plastered on the wall ...

How do gallium and tantalum influence your daily life? Quite a bit, it turns out. Gallium is a component of light-emitting diodes, or LEDs, while tantalum can be found in mobile phones. Boeing ...

Editor’s note: The following, originally published with the title “Putting the Elements in Their Places,” is the introduction to the Scientific American Classics special digital edition,“The Quest for ...

To celebrate 150 years of the periodic table, all the words in this grid are made from chemical element symbols. Fill each white square with one element. Take care! Some squares contain more than one ...

The rare radioactive substance made its way from the United States to Russia on a commercial flight in June 2009. Customs officers balked at accepting the package, which was ensconced in lead ...

She's just 3 years old, but young Brielle can recite the entire periodic table — and she just schooled Ellen DeGeneres on the significance of its elements. The pigtailed California cutie also knows ...

The periodic table of chemical elements, often called the periodic table, organizes all discovered chemical elements in rows (called periods) and columns (called groups) according to increasing atomic ...

What is the longest word ever to appear in print in English? There's a lot of confusion and misinformation on the subject. But when I set out to write about the periodic table, I was hopeful I would ...