yes well I'm not sure I really need the
mask now I'm at a man with I'm you we
do Brady so let's take this off
where'd that come from I made it myself
so it's unique I suppose I've always
felt it's quite difficult to do unique
things with the periodic table I wanted
to tell you about something else that I
did which I thought was unique as well
with the periodic table one very nice
Segway professor it started a long time
before lockdown
perta nearly five years ago I was
playing on my computer one afternoon and
decided I can't remember why to flip the
horizontal of the periodic table using
PowerPoint so what was pointing up
suddenly pointed down and it was a sort
of joke but then when I looked at it I
was really quite surprised because the
periodic table turned out to look
something like this of course the first
time I did it the letters weren't the
right way round I thought it was good if
you thought about the periodic table
like a graph because when it's a graph
if you have the zero here things
normally increase in this direction and
that one then the periodic table they
increase in this direction for
everything like weight and so on
increases when you go downwards so it's
a bit sort of upside down and this is
really difficult when we talk to
chemists to our students about how the
electrons fill up to give you the
structure of the periodic table it's got
a German name it's called the Aufbau
principle meaning the building up
principle somehow it doesn't sound good
to the students if you say this means
building up and then you do it downwards
so I got quite excited about this and I
wrote a little article about how having
the periodic table the other way up
might be better certainly
from the point of view of teaching and I
wrote to an expert on the periodic table
and said had he ever seen one like this
and he said no so I got really excited
perhaps I'd done something new with the
periodic table so I sent it to the
journal and the editor was quite excited
but then he said hang on a minute
perhaps people will read it like a book
from the left to the right and starting
at the top rather than the bottom where
all the interesting elements like
hydrogen and helium are and they'll
concentrate too much on the heavy
elements at the top so we were stuck and
then I suddenly remembered that my
daughter who's an experimental
psychologist who specializes in
measuring where people look tracking
their eyes when they look at a picture
and so they could see whether I was
looking at Brady or the camera or
whatever I decided I would collaborate
with her never collaborated with my
daughter before in the scientific
project so she and her colleague Alexis
set up an experiment not a very big one
with 24 subjects so that people weren't
biased they used a blank periodic table
with all the squares but not letters and
the results were really quite surprising
what they found was that if you look at
a no ordinary periodic table you begin
by looking in the middle and then your
eyes go to the top where hydrogen and
helium are but with the inverted
periodic table
you still begin in the middle but your
eyes gives downwards to the hydrogen and
helium so we could prove to the editor
that the way people looked at our
periodic table was different from a book
why is that professor does the paper or
did your daughter conclude why no matter
where you put those elements hydrogen
and helium and you know the world that's
where you go I think it's because the
picture well the periodic table is
relatively symmetrical where
the lanthanides and actinides and heavy
elements are but at the bottom or the
top depending which one you're looking
at we're hydrogen helium are there a bit
unsymmetrical and I think your eye is
drawn to things that are unsymmetrical
and there was also thought that perhaps
the upside-down periodic table looked a
bit like an animal with legs but that
wasn't really proved one way or another
the numbers were significant but the
difference wasn't huge but it was enough
to convince us and more importantly the
editor and the referees so that it was a
real effect and if you're interested you
can read all the details in the
supplementary information to the paper
there was then quite a long delay
because chemistry journal had never
published a paper involving human
subjects and there was a lot of extra
paperwork but it was published and I was
really excited to have a paper with my
name and Ellen's name together
professor be honest because it's just
you me and the periodic videos viewers
was this bit of like a gimmick or a
publicity stunt or what are you trying
to achieve here you're not seriously
trying to get every periodic table on a
wall and a textbook in the world flipped
upside down a well I wanted to do was to
make people think differently about the
periodic table I am showered by people
sending me different sorts of the
periodic tables saying there's is much
better than the conventional one and so
on
I don't think ours is any better than
any other one but for some purposes like
explaining the filling of the electron
shells could be useful there were some
quite exciting things the New York Times
and the London Times wrote little
articles about it never had my research
in the popular press before and
then it caused quite a sensation in
Japan and a museum in Japan included a
version of the periodic table in their
display for the International Year of
the periodic table and best of all for
the closing ceremony of the
International Year of the periodic table
in Tokyo a special fan was made you can
see it here quite useful on the hot day
hand which has our upside-down periodic
table on it but the really important
lesson for me was that you cannot really
do anything very original with the
periodic table and sometime after the
paper was published somebody pointed out
to me that the English theoretical
chemistry stuff along get Higgins had
published the paper in 1957 when I was 9
years old not quite 10 and had never
heard of the periodic table saying
perhaps it would be better to have the
periodic table the other way round for
teaching the Aufbau principle in the end
I got the fun of publishing a paper by
go quite a solitary lesson that you
cannot discover anything new about the
periodic table except if you're Brady
who invented the periodic table of
videos which I think really was original
if you've ever dreamed of having your
name on the periodic table well I'm not
sure there's much we can do to help you
with that that's a very select Club
some of the great names in science but
what you can do is have your name on our
periodic table of patrons which looks
like this this is a slightly less
exclusive but equally important club of
people that support our project on
patreon we update this table every month
or two with names of people who've
adopted elements patreon supporters also
receive occasional exclusive extras
photos behind-the-scenes stuff if you're
interested go to patreon.com/PERIODICVIDEOS
description thanks everyone for watching
we'll be back again soon with more
stories from the periodic table that one
not the patreon one
