• Question: Do you know the periodic table off by heart?

    Asked by anon-195479 to Reka, Paul, Laura, Kevin, Freya on 19 Jan 2019.
    • Photo: Kevin Daly

      Kevin Daly answered on 19 Jan 2019:

      No thank goodness! When I was an undergraduate at college I knew it pretty well – there are actually important trends and general rules in the periodic table that are more important than each specific entry in the table.

    • Photo: Laura Nolan

      Laura Nolan answered on 21 Jan 2019:

      No I don’t and I never have known it off by heart! I remember a physics teacher in high school saying we had to know every single element off by heart but I thought that memorising the table just for the sake of it was not a great use of my time (so I didn’t do it…). Like Kevin said, there are some general trends and rules that can be important to devote time to learning but I see little value in knowing all elements in the table off by heart, at least not for my job!

    • Photo: Reka Nagy

      Reka Nagy answered on 21 Jan 2019:

      I remember the following order: H, He, Li, Be, Na, Mg, K, Ca on the ‘left side’ of the periodic table, and B, [???], Ne at the top of the ‘right side’. The rest, not so much. But outside of exams, I’ve never been in a situation where knowing it off by heart would have saved me! If needed, you can always look it up online in a flash.

      And as the others are saying, the general rules that govern how and why the elements are where they are in the periodic table is a lot more important than knowing which elements are where to begin with!!

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