The Periodic Table of Elements Scaled to Show The Elements’ Actual Abundance on Earth

elements_relative_abundance

When you learned about The Periodic Table of Elements in high school, it probably didn’t look like this. Above, we have a different way of visualizing the elements. Created by Professor William F. Sheehan at Santa Clara University in 1970, this chart takes the elements (usually shown like this) and scales them relative to their abundance on the Earth’s surface. In the small print beneath the chart, Sheehan notes “The chart emphasizes that in real life a chemist will probably meet O, Si, Al [Oxygen, Silicon and Aluminum] and that he better do something about it.” Click here to see the chart — and the less abundant elements — in a larger format. Below we have a few more creative takes on the Periodic Table.

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