In this Internet Activity, you will get a little comic relief. First you will study the Periodic Table of Comic Books to find some interesting and amusing misconceptions about chemistry. If you do the Additional Activities, you'll look at some unusual, but workable, ways in which periodic tables are organized and compare them to the structure of the standard periodic table.

The standard long form of the periodic table appears on the walls of almost every chemistry classroom. However, it's not the only way that the elements can be arranged. The familiar periodic table is the end result of the creativity of several European scientists in the 1860s.

The Russian chemist Dmitrii I. Mendeleev is generally credited with the insights and creativity that led to the modern periodic table. Although Mendeleev's table differs little from the charts on the walls of laboratories today, these additional Internet activities clearly demonstrate that the familiar standard long form is not the only way to represent the periodic relationships of the elements.

Go to the Periodic Table of Comic Books, click on oxygen, and answer the following questions.

1. List at least two misconceptions that Ricky Nelson has about atoms.
   
   
2. What does the writer of Dr. Solar fail to realize about chemistry?
   
   
3. What does Uncle Scrooge's computer still have to learn about chemistry?
   
   

Additional Activities

Compare and contrast the following alternative arrangements of the periodic table. Describe each arrangement in a word or phrase.

1. The standard long form
   
   
2. The Benfey periodic table
   
   
3. The Zmaczynski periodic table
   
   
4. The Giguere periodic table
   
   
5. Explore further the Periodic Table of Comic Books to discover other chemical misconceptions found in the comics. Tell what you found and where you found it.
   
   
6. Be a modern-day Mendeleev, go to Modeling the Periodic Table and try your hand at constructing your own periodic table. Use this interactive simulation to group elements by their characteristics, arrange them by atomic weight, and place them on a table close to the other elements in their group.