Periodic Table (元素周期表, 周期表, 주기율표)

As the son of two research scientists who attended graduate school in chemistry and worked in the pharmaceutical industry based on their knowledge of chemistry, I really should know about chemistry. You'd think I would at least know the Periodic Table backwards and forwards, right? Nope. I mainly know the first 1-20 (the important ones), some weird symbols like Au (gold), Ag (silver) and W (Tungsten), but the treachorous climb up to No. 118 Oganesson is a rocky one full of rare metals and trans-uranium elements. There are no "guideposts" in that journey neither like the order of Presidents from 1-46 like knowing Lincoln is No. 16 and building around there, JFK is No. 35, at least some midway mile markers. Nope, the elements from 20-100 are an unforgiving mass of "you either know them or you don't," and you often don't even know how to pronounce Molybdenum (Mo, No. 42) nor Ytterbium, Yb (No. 70, much less what they do, what their atomic weight is, what color they are, etc. Until now! Thenaming of periodic table elements is pretty fascinating because it has to do with the search for elements; scientists like Glenn Seaborg won Pulitzer Prizes in physics specifically for finding new eleements, and it was really a race between the U.S. and Russia to leave a legacy as to how to name elements and make sure they stuck in the books forever: a lot at stake. For example, Berkelium 97 and Californium 98 were named for the Berkley lab that Seaborg worked at, and the group of scients there wanted to dedicate the name of the element to the place where they "discovered" the atom (they just blasted electrons and particles at existing elements like plutonium using a particle accelerator/cyclotron to see if they could create any new elements, and it worked to create a bunch of elements after uranium, hence the trans-uranium elements starting at 92, Uranium. The names really provide a good history lesson, like the names "Neptunium" and "Plutonium" (93 and 94) were named because Uranium was named after Uranus, and Seaborg and company wanted some continuity. Fermium (No. 100, maybe the mile marker we needed like the list of presidents) was named after the Chicago-area renowned physicist Enrico Fermi frmo Italy, Mendelevium at No. 101 was used to appease the Russians during the Cold War by naming an element after one of the most famous Russian scientists of all time and Father of the Periodic Table. (Lot of scientists in the later stages of the Period Table, if you've never noticed, including the only element named after a woman scientist, Meitnerium No. 109 named after Lise Meitner who discovered nuclear fission but didn't get the credit (this is if you don't include Curium at No. 96, which was named after both Pierre and Marie Curie). For a trivia nerd like me, this great stuff, both a history lesson of scientists as well as a fun way to learn all the elements without getting bored; it's hard to pay attention when it gets too technical with specific terms, but the Period Table doesn't! It's like a historical novel; I can imagine the Scientific Community equivalent of Forest Gump being invovled in all of these elements and having a story where he lives through history meeting all of these namesakes. I will present this in a fun way to Baby Girl Yan.....in a few years. One of the more exciting things about having a kid is what I'm going to teach Baby Yan. Nothing for the first year or so, I suppose, although MJ already started reading Dr. Seuss books to her while she's still in utero, MJ claims that the "baby is listening" and moves based on the voices and whether we're watching K-Pop Demon Hunters or not at that moment. I'm not sure the baby is reacting to the content of what music or book is playing, but I do think they do pick up on the rhythms of our voices and tone, so yea not a bad idea to get started on reading. We have this dream of Baby Y becoming trilingual right away with Mandarin, Korean, AND English (we'll just bombard her with languages at a young age), but I'm also anticipating being able to answer a lot of basic questions that I didn't really know 4 years ago, mainly because I refreshed my understanding in some cases or learned for the first time in some cases, a lot of scientific facts. Like why is the sky blue? (Rayleigh scattering causes blue waves of sunlight to be reflected more than other colors of the sunlight), what are the layers of the Earth, the levels of Earth's atmosphere, the difference between El Nino and La Nina, different cloud formations.......Science is actually really interesting if you keep it a "explain it to me like I'm 5 level," which is coincidentally what I will do to Baby Yan when she's 5 (or maybe 4, hopefully she's a quick learner/ precocious). Hopefully my explanation will be better than those given on TikTok or at least be more intimate and more memorable because it's coming from her father. Science!