{"id":4738,"date":"2010-06-03T15:28:04","date_gmt":"2010-06-03T15:28:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/principles\/2010\/06\/03\/the-periodic-table-is-not-a-cr\/"},"modified":"2010-06-03T15:28:04","modified_gmt":"2010-06-03T15:28:04","slug":"the-periodic-table-is-not-a-cr","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/2010\/06\/03\/the-periodic-table-is-not-a-cr\/","title":{"rendered":"The Periodic Table Is Not a Crossword Puzzle"},"content":{"rendered":"

A number of SF-related sites have been talking about the “Periodic Table of Women in SF” put together by Sandra McDonald, presumably passed around at Wiscon. James Nicoll has a list of the authors<\/a>, and SFSignal has a link to the table<\/a>, which I will reproduce here to save you the annoyance of opening a PDF:<\/p>\n

\"i-2ec21e5d308a73b30404f561e8071bf4-periodic_table_women.jpg\"<\/p>\n

This is an area where my nerdiness gets the best of me, because while I appreciate the concept– listing a whole bunch of really good female authors as a way to draw attention to them– the execution is dreadful. It’s particularly disappointing given that the whole project is in reference to science fiction, which is a branch of literature that you might hope would have some appreciation of science.<\/p>\n

The key flaw– which shows up in lots of “periodic table” lists– is that “periodic table” is not Scientist for “list.” The whole point of the periodic table of the elements is that they aren’t just listed, they’re arranged in a very specific way that gives you information about the elements and their properties. The real periodic table looks like this:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"i-3eaee04b31f4f2d02f765f0b7de76f90-periodic_table.gif\"<\/p>\n

The arrangement of rows and columns is not random, and it’s not a matter of mere graphic design. Those columns mean something– elements in the same column share properties. All of the elements in the leftmost column are highly reactive metals, all of the elements in the rightmost column are non-reactive gases, and so on. The position of an element in the periodic table tells you something about its chemical and material properties– in fact, this feature of the table is one of the crucial steps leading to the modern understanding of chemistry and atomic structure.<\/p>\n

If there’s an organizing principle behind McDonald’s table, it’s not obvious to me, and it’s not in the PDF containing the image. The authors– many of whom are outstanding authors, and nearly all of whom are worth reading– are just put on there in some apparently random order. It doesn’t even have the right number of rows and columns.<\/p>\n

This is really a missed opportunity. With some thought beyond “let’s see if we can come up with 117 names and two-letter symbols for our favorite authors,” this could’ve been something really cool and interesting. If you grouped authors into columns by some sort of literary similarity, say, that would be really awesome, and even sort of useful, in a “if you liked this author, you might like the authors above or below her on the table.” It’d take a lot of work, but it’d be worth it.<\/p>\n

As it is, it’s just irksome to nerds like me.<\/p>\n

(I saw it first in James’s post, and went looking for it as a result. I was thinking of copying James’s “which of these have you read” thing (lower bound: 50, but I may have missed a few), but got distracted by my annoyance at the misuse of the term “periodic table”…)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A number of SF-related sites have been talking about the “Periodic Table of Women in SF” put together by Sandra McDonald, presumably passed around at Wiscon. James Nicoll has a list of the authors, and SFSignal has a link to the table, which I will reproduce here to save you the annoyance of opening a… Continue reading The Periodic Table Is Not a Crossword Puzzle<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[146,18,7,37,11,29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4738","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-atoms_and_molecules","category-books","category-physics","category-pop_culture","category-science","category-sf","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4738","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4738"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4738\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4738"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4738"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4738"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}