Re: How to use gperiodic

[Georges Khaznadar <khazuada@univ-littoral.fr>]

Doug Loss wrote:

> I gather that Kyle isn't an educator (neither am I).  

I used to teach physics and chemistry for 25 years.

> I think that some
> thoughts from chemistry teachers on how gperiodic might be used in
> schools could be quite helpful in giving ideas about which extensions to
> implement.  Could you folks out there please give us your thoughts?
> 
> At a guess, I think that gperiodic would most likely be used as a
> reference tool rather than a primary pedagogical program 

My opinion is that gperiodic can be used to experiment with the
database of chemical elements.

The main idea from Mendeleiev was that chemical properties were
quasi-periodical, and so he built his classification.

Nowadays, students are taught the Mendeleiev table without having
Mendeleiev's background (and it is necessary, because they must
learn before becoming as old as Mendeleiev when he built up his table).

But some experimentation is a nice way to go into the table's logic.

I allready plaid with databases of chemical elements which were bound
to a good generalistic database tool. It was possible to realize
beautiful plots in 2d, 3d, many colors, etc, concerning any property
of the elements. Very nice, indeed, but not useful for those students which
have to learn physics and chemistry and are not wishing to underdtand
the database engine.

I think that it is possible to express the same ideas while displaying
allways the periodic table, which has to be memorized by the students.
This is why I argued and asked for a colorization method to display
up to three properties at the same time in the table layout.

The activities which can be proposed to the students can be of three
categories :

1 - define a new coloring scheme to display the periodic table with a
new set of properties (directly read from the database or calculated)

	example : use the property (electric charge / ionic radiusē),
	which is proportional to the maximum electric field in
	the neighborhood of an ion.

2 - modify a colorscale to threshold some continuous property and
display classes of elements.

	example : use a colorscale with two colors only, threshold on
	the basis of the electronegativity, adjust the threshold to
	separate metals from non-metals.

3 - add the result of a personal research concerning an element in
the web page which is locally connected to it. 

When a student is allowed to make such activities, (s)he can see with
some of them the main regularities of the periodic table, like the chemical
families which appear in the colums of the table, and with other activities
some less evident properties, like diagonal relationships, which are very
difficult to teach at a higher level.