Article: The nature of things: attempts to change the periodic table raise eyebrows.

One day, during the spring semester of 1999, L. Bruce Railsback turned against one of science's most visible icons: the periodic table of chemical elements. He was using a conventional periodic table mounted on the wall to illustrate a geochemistry lecture about the behavior of minerals in natural waters. That's when he realized how confusing the table's organization was, at least for his purposes. "I looked like a contortionist trying to point to different elements in different places,"says Railsback. "That's what pushed me over the edge."

To most people, the periodic table is the epitome of science at its most orderly. The table's tidy rows and columns slot all ...

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