<p><b>Understanding the Periodic Table</b> couples a comprehensive overview of the periodic table with in-depth lessons on each of its 118 elements. With Ron Davis Jr. of Georgetown University as your expert guide, you will be able to refine your portrait of one of science’s most iconic images and crucial organizational tools in 24 lessons that combine instructions with experiments and animated lab demonstrations. Spend the first half of the course exploring the history and fundamentals of the periodic table. In part two, move from the top to bottom row to explore the discoveries, subatomic structures, behaviors, and everyday uses of the table’s elements in striking detail.</p>
Overview
Syllabus
- By This Professor
- 01: The Periodic Table: Our Menu of Matter
- 02: From Triads to Tables and the Role of Protons
- 03: How Electrons Shape the Table
- 04: Periodic Trends in Element Properties
- 05: The Origin and Distribution of the Elements
- 06: Elements Break Down: Radiation and Fission
- 07: First-Row Opposites: Hydrogen and Helium
- 08: Sodium, Potassium, and the Alkali Metals
- 09: Magnesium, Calcium, and the Alkaline Earths
- 10: Enormous Variety on the Table’s Right Side
- 11: Noble Gases: The “Lazy” Unreactive Elements
- 12: Halogens: The Most Reactive Nonmetals
- 13: Why Oxygen and Nitrogen Are Irreplaceable
- 14: Complexity of Carbon, Sulfur, and Phosphorus
- 15: Silicon and the Metalloid Diagonal
- 16: Aluminum, Tin, Lead, and Other Weak Metals
- 17: The Table’s Great Divide: Transition Metals
- 18: Colorful and Durable Early Transition Metals
- 19: Magnets and Catalysts of the Middle Transition
- 20: From Coins to Toxins: Copper to Mercury
- 21: Rare-Earth Elements: Surprisingly Abundant
- 22: Nuclear Fuel: Thorium, Uranium, and Plutonium
- 23: Creating the Transplutonic Elements
- 24: Superheavy Atoms and the Transfermium Wars
Taught by
Ron B. Davis Jr.
