Category Archives: Periodic Blackwork

So here it is, all 118 elements, a different and relevant pattern for each. I must admit that when I started out I never imagined I would be able to find a meaningful pattern for every element. The initial plan was simply 118 different blackwork patterns, perhaps incorporating a few of Dalton’s symbols. It wasContinue reading “Complete”

Oganesson, atomic number 118, is the last element of the periodic table, at least for the time being. It is named for Yuri Oganessian who led the team at the Russia’s Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in the discoveries of six elements, oganesson included. Oganesson has, in theory, seven electron shells with a full outerContinue reading “Element 118”

Back in May ‘Sue the Vic’ asked if my embroidery would be finished in time to exhibit in the jubilee exhibition in one of our local churches, and suggested that I could write a piece about the elements discovered in the reign of Queen Elizabeth II. The race was on to pick up from theContinue reading “Thirty and counting”

When Anna Bertha Ludwig saw an image of the bones in her hand she exclaimed ‘I have seen my death!’ – quite a reaction to the first human X-ray. Just a few weeks earlier her husband Wilhelm Röntgen had discovered a new kind of radiation, and he called it ‘X-radiation’, the ‘X’ for ‘unknown’. HeContinue reading “Roentgenium”

The flammable properties of hydrogen gas are well known to anyone who has been to a chemistry demonstration lecture and seen a hydrogen balloon being exploded. But this property of hydrogen does not match up to its name which is derived from the Greek for ‘water former’, water being the product when it is burned.Continue reading “Flash and bang”

Rather out of season but here is a small forest of fir trees, once a major source of potash. Grown predominantly in the Baltic states Poland and Russia, the wood of these trees was burned in trenches and the resulting ash dissolved in boiling water. The liquor was then evaporated in copper pots (hence pot-ash)Continue reading “O potash tree, o potash tree”

Two elements almost as far apart as you can get on the Periodic Table – caesium in Group 1 and krypton right over in Group 18 – and both have been used for accurate measurement. Using the colourless gas krypton to define the metre may at first sight seem odd, and I’m sure it wouldContinue reading “Matters of measurement”

Sodium chloride, one of humankind’s most familiar crystals. It has something of a bad name, being implicated in high blood pressure, but is also essential to animal life. I have used the crystalline structure of sodium chloride to represent sodium as it is the sodium ions that allow our bodies to generate nerve impulses andContinue reading “Salt crystals”

Our lives depend on the magnesium ion at the centre of the chlorophyll pigment that gives leafy plants their green colour. Without chlorophyll’s ability to absorb photons, plants would not have the chemical energy needed to synthesis sugars from carbon dioxide. Photosynthesis is fundamental to life on earth, supplying most of the necessary energy andContinue reading “Green grows the grass”

Yttrium – another example of the usefulness of rare earth elements, and another element named for the Ytterby mine in Sweden. One of the most important current uses of yttrium is as yttrium aluminium garnet doped with cerium to make white LEDs.