The person who bought the table for my classroom wall bought the dumbest one I’ve ever seen, without names or even the stairs to show the metalloids. Using suggestions I got here, I have modified a vector file of a table using Inkscape.
What suggestions do you have? Especially look at the little tables at the bottom left that indicate electron filling order and electronegativity. I’m unsure about those, especially the electronegativity. I have put the lanthanide and actinide series according to a suggestion from my friend with a better science education than I. Are there arguments to be made about that?
Your lanthanides and actinides are shown coming between the wrong columns (should be one to the right). Other than that it looks like a pretty normal Meendelev periodic table of elements. The electronegativity values (I’m assuming you are using the Pauling scale) are only approximate and will depend on the actual molecular configuration, so I’m not sure of the value of including those other than as a general guide as to whether an element will tend to be an electron donor or receipient in a chemical bond, but there is nothing wrong about it.
Who creates a periodic table without the element names? How is that supposed to teach students anything?
I assume you mean they are one too far to the right. They should be one to the left of where they are shown. Also the transition metals are shown in yellow not the gray as indicated in the identification.
There’s an error in the fine print at the bottom about the relative atomic mass. It lists three radioactive elements that have actual terrestrial average atomic mass instead of the mass of the isotope with the longest half-life. That’s true for two of them, but not for plutonium.
Transition metal box recolored, extra pink boxes deleted, arrow moved. Oh, and I just changed the footnote to be “However, for the elements Th and Pa which have a characteristic terrestrial isotopic composition…” The new phrase is not in the linked pdf below.
Any other thoughts about the little tables to the bottom left?
Just for ease of reading, especially at a distance, it would be far better to set the written-out element names like
Hydrogen
and not
HYDROGEN.
If there’s a good reason for the all caps (even if only that this is how periodic tables are always done), then keep them. But for reasons of readability and appearance, all caps is wrong.
Also (and this enters the realm of cosmetic twiddling, but why not, now that you’re here)…
The symbols (H, He, Li, Be…) are quite low in the boxes. Is this because you need room above them for something? If you’re not intentionally leaving room for something, I suggest keeping all the other components as is, but moving the symbols up, nearer to the middle of the box.
The arrow pointing to the lanthanides is still in the wrong place (although putting it in the right place seems nontrivial since the electronegativity chart is in the way).
Agree with DavidwithanR that the element names should not be all uppercase.
The word GROUP at the upper left is floating there without any clear referent. It seems to be associated with the +1 directly below it rather than the group number to the left.
That was the first thing I noticed as well. All caps takes more effort to read and comprehend.
Also, is it normal to have this many significant digits for atomic mass, and why do some elements have more significant digits than others? Granted I’m an astronomer and not a chemist, but it seems the atomic mass is a function of isotope abundance and therefore a function of where the sample comes from, and pointless to specify to 0.001 AMU precision.
Gallium is actually solid (by a margin of less than five degrees!) at 25° C. And I don’t really see why aluminum should be colored as a metalloid; it has pretty thoroughly metallic properties. (Tin, on the other hand, has a non-metallic allotrope which is stable slightly below room temperature.)
The last line on the page has a grammar problem. I have fixed it - unless I’ve misunderstood the meaning, in which case I’ve ruined it. How about this:
I hadn’t noticed the text at the bottom when I made the comment above. But why does it say “relative atomic mass is given with five significant digits” when some are given with 4 digits and some with 6 digits?
Assuming you’re working on it in Inkscape at actual size (as you should be) another way is to select a small section (one element’s square) and go to “Export PNG Image” and then export just that “Selection” at 300 dpi, then print it at the same dpi on a regular letter size piece of paper.
How about this: