🗓 ⚗️ HOMESCHOOL SCIENCE: Happy Birthday, Dmitri! (Mendeleev, that is)

The father of the Periodic Table of the Elements, the great Russian chemist Dmitri Ivanovich Mendeleev, was born on this day in a village near Tobolsk, Siberia, in 1834. Happy birthday, Dmitri!

More than 2000 years of research and speculation about the basic constituents of matter all came into focus with Mendeleev’s announcement of his “Periodic Law” in 1869. Why not celebrate today’s happy analytical anniversary with a simple interactive history of the chemical elements and the Periodic Table, prepared by the American Association for the Advancement of Science. It’s quite suitable for homeschool high schoolers and advanced middle schoolers — try reading each little vignette aloud as you scroll down through the centuries:

• ➢ Setting the Table: A Visual History of the Periodic Table (sciencemag.org)

Or, if you’re looking for something a little less historical and a little more poetical, why not learn a quirky haiku or two this week — there’s one in this collection for every element in the Periodic Table:

• ➢ Elemental Haiku: One for Each Element (sciencemag.org)

Perhaps we can consider “Hydrogen” to be a bonus homeschool poem-of-the-week:

Hydrogen
Your single proton
fundamental, essential.
Water. Life. Star fuel.

And of course no celebration of Mendeleev’s birthday can possibly be complete without a performance of one of the greatest musical masterpieces of Western Civilization, to wit, “The Elements” by the immortal Tom Lehrer (b. 1928):

What elemental discoveries have you and your students made in your homeschool this Orion Term? 😊

❡ Explore more: You can find an up-to-date presentation of the Periodic Table in the “Science & Technology” section of your homeschool almanac, along with a record of the year each element was discovered. 📚

❡ Elementary, my dear Dmitri: This is one of our occasional posts on Homeschool Holidays & History. Add your name to our weekly mailing list and get great homeschool teaching ideas delivered right to your mailbox all through the year. 📫

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