S2E09 - Periodic (the Periodic Table)

#Periodic #GeniusGames #Chemistry #PeriodicTable #Atoms #Elements #STEM #BoardGames #Science #SciComm

Summary

In this episode we get elemental for the game Periodic, with the amazing Dr. Raychelle Burks as our special guest. We talk about why the table is arranged like it is, why some elements are weird, what the groupings mean, why we should love *all* subatomic particles, how isotopes help solve crimes, and how some people get viscious when playing Monopoly. So grab some dihydrogen monoxide and join us for Periodic, by Genius Games.

Timestamps

• 00:00 - Introductions
• 02:52 - Molybdenum poisoning & glowing plants
• 12:39 - Basics of Periodic
• 19:14 - What is the Periodic Table?
• 32:35 - Why are some elements weird?
• 39:53 - Not just electrons
• 55:16 - Nitpick corner
• 1:00:37 - Final grades

Links

• Periodic official site (Genius Games)
• Cattle molybdenum poisoning (Australian Veterinary Journal)
• Glowing succulents (Matter) 
• Glowing rubidium (Youtube; Royal Society of Chemistry)
• NIST periodic table 
• Dr. Raychelle Burk on Tiktok, and her Trace Analysis column

Find our socials at https://www.gamingwithscience.net

This episode of Gaming with Science™ was produced with the help of the University of Georgia and is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license.

Full Transcript

(Some platforms truncate the transcript due to length restrictions. If so, you can always find the full transcript on https://www.gamingwithscience.net/ )

Jason  0:00  
Jason, hello

Jason  0:06  
and welcome to the gaming with Science Podcast, where we talk about the science behind some of your favorite games.

Brian  0:12  
Today, we're talking about periodic by genius games. Hello. Welcome back to gaming with science. This is Brian

Jason  0:20  
this is Jason

Brian  0:21  
and we are joined by Dr Raychelle Burks, Raychelle, could you introduce yourself please?

Raychelle  0:26  
 Yes, I am Raychelle Burks, I am a chemist and a forensic scientist. 

Brian  0:32  
Well, I'm so glad you're able to join us today. We were just talking about, let's see you said that your Instagram handle is radium, yttrium, and you'rr Dr. rubidium. And this is game is all about the periodic table. You use three different elements in your sort of social or media, like internet handles. So I think we got the right person for this.

Raychelle  0:51  
I hope so. 

Jason  0:52  
And just to give a bit more information to our listeners, you said you're at American University in Washington, DC, right?

Raychelle  0:57  
Yes, the and actually, it's funny, because it's like, it is American University. What a wild name for a school. We have a lot of universities, but it is one that's kind of got a congressional mandate. There was, you know, back in the day, they were like, we are going to have the American University. And it's like, it didn't quite work out,

Brian  1:16  
but that's interesting. So you said there's a congressional mandate. So this is kind of like, we're at the University of Georgia. We're a land grant institution, so we sort of have this mission that the university is supposed to satisfy you. You are in a similar situation.

Raychelle  1:29  
It's, well, it's weird, you know, I went to a land grant institution, so I'm a proud corn Husker. That's where I got my PhD. So University of Nebraska at Lincoln and so land grant institutions, definitely a bit different, right? Because you're taxpayer money, there's some property involved, and you have a mandate, you have an extension office. I believe you have a fantastic extension office. I think all state residents you know, have the ability to have, like, a library card and come to a university event, like there's a real community kind of based thing. And in a way, American actually also has that many universities do, especially for the neighborhood they're in. But American University is actually chartered by Congress, like, way back in the day, I think it's 1893 is this a pop quiz now? But so it's, it's an interesting history that that kind of comes about.

Brian  2:25  
Well, very cool. Let's see. So, so we're here to talk about the game periodic by genius games. This is another in our genius games roster, which I figure eventually we'll be working our way through all of the genius games games at some point or another. But this is our second chemistry game. So we're excited to talk about it, but really, this game is about the periodic table specifically, which is very cool, and I definitely have questions, so I'm excited to have somebody here to to give answers. But why don't we start with our science banter topic? So what have we learned or found studies something interesting in the world of science today. So we usually let our guests go first if they've got something, if not, Jason has something queued up

Raychelle  3:08  
well, as a forensic scientist, I will say I spent a lot of time kind of in crime. I mean, hey, Okay,

Brian  3:17  
makes sense. 

Raychelle  3:19  
And so, you know, 

Brian  3:20  
so does CSI, does this show CSI drive you insane? It must, oh,

Raychelle  3:24  
you know, it's because I know it's fiction. And you know, there's a lot of like, I'm sure, you know, if you ask an astronomer, physicist, you know, it's like, Oh, does this show drive you like, there's some good bits, there's some bad bits. So I would say, if anything, it'd be like Breaking Bad, where you're, like, the one time we've got a full-time chemistry show, it's a meth cook?

Brian  3:48  
Well crime, you know, there you go.

Raychelle  3:49  
But crime, you know? But I would say one of the stories that I came across was, you know, we see some of the same elements as kind of like, culprits, right? People are like, sure, sure, arsenic, like we get, you know, thallium, right? People are very familiar with that, not only because of news stories, but because of kind of historical crime fiction. I mean, if you know, you've seen it, Agatha Christie, you're like, is it going to be arsenic? You know? But there are other elements that you're like, Excuse me, like you just you don't see them as often. So it just seems really wild. And it really caught my attention. I came across a story involving molybdenum, molybdenum.

Jason  4:32  
Oh, wait, it's not molybdenum? Have I been saying that wrong my entire life?

Raychelle  4:35  
No, no, it's Don't, don't, because we I will pronounce things as I like them.

Brian  4:41  
I think in Biology, we usually say it's a molybdenum cofactor. I've never heard this other pronunciation, but I'm going to start using it

Raychelle  4:47  
and that, that is my new and exciting way to say it. But, yeah, don't, don't go by me, because I will also, in a weird way. I went to a year abroad in England, in college, and I will actually say aluminium. And but to me, I It helps me actually remember how to spell it. I mean, it makes sense. Alu-mini-um, right? So when I pronounce it molybdenum, that's literally to help me remember, oh, it's Molly, a B, a D, like, because I'm like, I love how they spell these elements sometimes where it's just wacky. Well, for us English speakers, we're like, did you really put a Y, a B and a D, like, right next to each other? But to have the we just don't hear about this element. Yeah, right. And you know, even though, of course, like a lot of your metals, the kind of shared impact, you know, kind of, quote, heavy metal poisoning, where you're going to see the same types of symptoms, but you usually it's like, the same old heavy metals, you know, like, you're like, your lead

Jason  5:53  
lead mercury, arsenic...

Raychelle  5:55  
the usual suspects. And that's why this was, like, it's like a twist in a Dateline episode, where you're like, you mean, it wasn't the husband,

Brian  6:04  
so this is 

Jason  6:05  
so what happened with it?

Brian  6:06  
Yeah, yeah, what was the story?

Speaker 1  6:08  
It really kind of affected cattle. And that's the thing. Is, this wasn't a human poisoning. Is that some of the features you know, your your GI distress, joint pain that should sound familiar to folks that kind of clock, some of these metallic poisoning things. But there's also a big part of crime that involves, like, wildlife related like people will actually, like, try to hurt each other's cattle or try to poison crops, right? Like, sabotage level tomfoolery. And so it was about, you know, the real impact of this on this livestock, and then how did they kind of map it out and kind of get to the root of things? And so it, you know, that kind of a crime. Sometimes we're so focused on human-involving action, which I understand why we all do, but to just see how they apply the same type of toxicology work and, like sleuthing to be like, who is poisoning these cows was, like, really interesting to me. But again, also, because it's just an element that, I mean, it's just not one that we talk about. It's not, you know, one of the most when we talk, like, biologically, you're like, yeah, yeah, it's the same seven elements. Okay, you know, a lot of time on carbon, a lot of time, you know, and you got your coinage metals, and you're like, sure, sure, snooze fest. But when you hear something that's like an element that even you forgot about as a chemist, is kind of like, Oh,

Brian  7:39  
I'm trying to think so there are, there's a surprising number of elements, the micro trace elements you need, like Selenium, and you need a little bit of cobalt, and you need, I think you probably do need, a little bit of molybdenum. And there's a couple of, what else Am I forgetting? What are some of the weird ones? You need some zinc. You need a little bit of copper. 

Raychelle  7:56  
Oh, you need plenty of zinc. Yeah. 

Brian  7:58  
Oh, you do?

Raychelle  7:58  
You need copper. not too much, all right? Not too much, but, but Selenium, and the fact that you said that, that is another one where we know that it's got some real positive benefit, right, biologically. So sometimes people will take and they hear this, they hear a snippet in the news of, you know, some, usually it's some type of, you know, trace element that is important from a tallow point, you know, and like the research, gets interpreted as being like,

Brian  8:24  
they poison themselves. They completely overdo.

Speaker 1  8:27  
Yes, unfortunately. They a little bit go too far. And as we know, too much of good thing is actually bad.

Brian  8:34  
Yeah, that's, that's the classic human thing. Well, if a little is good, then more must be better

Jason  8:38  
The dose makes the poison.

Raychelle  8:39  
And also sometimes dose makes the poison, but also sometimes unit conversions, you know, we know, if you're talking about quote, micron,

Brian  8:51  
yeah, what is, what is, what is a microgram anyway, right?

Raychelle  8:55  
But then somebody is like, Oh, they, they dispersed a milligram. Yikes.

Brian  9:02  
I think having a mu symbol in the metric is probably bad, because I've actually, have you seen this where people will use these symbol fonts, and then everything gets converted over during the process of, like, inter converting a document, and your little symbol font, mu turns into an M, and all of a sudden your microgram is a milligram,

Speaker 1  9:19  
yep. And you can see how it happens, right? And then it's like, oh no. And it is this, it's unfortunate. It is an accident. It is a mishap. And people, you know, sometimes they're trying to do the right thing, they think, okay, I take my daily vitamin. I've taken a bit of extra whatever. And you can go too far. That's, that's the story of the periodic table. You can, in fact go too far.

Brian  9:44  
So let's see. So the story was, some cows got heavy metal poisoning from molybdenum, right? Is that the this was a news story?

Unknown Speaker  9:51  
 No, no, this was, I found it in a journal article. 

Brian  9:54  
Oh, that's cool. Can you share that with us?

Raychelle  9:56  
but I also, I mean, I also go looking for these things, sure, sure. Sure. Yeah. So you're like, Yeah, I just casually came across this mass poisoning. I will share it with you. It is, but I, you know, because of my background again, I I kind of look for these things, which is that says something, all right.

Brian  10:16  
What about you, Jason, did you find us anything cool? 

Jason  10:18  
I did actually something related to this. I found glowing plants. So I've always been fascinated with luminescence, and some of our listeners may have heard about like the Firefly Petunia, which naturally glows due to a light emitting compound it creates.

Brian  10:33  
Well, not naturally. We had to make this. 

Jason  10:35  
Yes, yeah, it was genetically engineered. This is something else, actually. It relates to the game, because what this group did is that they took a bunch of micro particles, so metallic micro particles that will naturally absorb light and then re emit it over a long period of time, several hours, and they injected it into succulents, and they kind of spread throughout the leaves, and they became these glowing plants.

Brian  10:56  
What kind of particles are these? I've heard about these aren't quantum nano dots. Are they?

Jason  10:59  
I don't that phrase was not used in the article. 

Brian  11:03  
That's probably not it. Then, 

Jason  11:04  
no, these are they called the micro particles because they're in about the seven micron, micron size. It was strontium aluminate, and by tweaking the chemistry or the size, they could change the color. They have this wonderful figure where they show a bunch of these little like succulent rosettes in like red and orange and green and blue. The problem is that you have to inject every leaf individually because they don't spread very far throughout the plant. Okay? And they, I mean, they did say that they showed no signs of toxicity in the 10 days that they were following them for the study. So

Brian  11:38  
I had plants that have been fine for 10 days without having being watered.

Jason  11:43  
Okay? So there's a lot still to do here, because this is definitely the sort of thing I can see, like, okay, at some point, someone or someone's pet is going to eat one of these. So there need to be some safety studies on those before they get released. But it's still a cool thing, because they can make this rainbow of colors. They have this great figure showing the different rainbow of it, and then someone standing in front of a plant, a glowing plant wall, where they just have a bunch of these succulents up on a wall, and they're just kind of glowing.

Brian  12:07  
I mean, that does sound amazing. Is the idea that this is to be a consumer product. Is that the intention? 

Jason  12:13  
I think that's the end goal. I mean, I think the end goal is that, I mean, it's probably going to be a novelty. I mean, people keep talking about, oh, we'll make glowing plants to replace lights at night. It's like, I don't think you can actually store enough light in a plant to do that

Brian  12:25  
yeah, energetically, that's going to really tax the plant

Jason  12:28  
so, but they make really cool novelties. So

Brian  12:31  
okay, all right, that's that is weird and cool, and I'm excited to see the wall of rainbow plants. Thank you for the wonderful chemical stories. But why don't we talk about the game periodic. Okay, so periodic is from genius games, one of our favorite board game companies, because they specialize in producing games with a hard science theme and usually a strong educational component, although the games are designed to be fun, not educational, because we've already learned how educational is a dirty word in the games industry. So the designers of this game are John Coveyou, who is the founder of genius games and has a designer credit on most, if not all, of their games, as well as Paul Solomon, who has designed some genius games, as well as some games for some other companies. He's done not only periodic, but also genotype, which we did earlier this season, as well as the game virulence, which we haven't played yet. Periodic is for two to five players, we'll play in about 40 minutes. We played way faster than that. I think it's always adjusted a little bit by player count. I think Jason and I had the game done at about half an hour, and that was Jason's first time playing. So probably we could get it done even faster than that, if we wanted to, but I don't know why you would. So what does the game look like? The center of the game is a periodic table. Well, it's an incomplete periodic table. The actinides and lanthanides are completely just kicked out. They're not even shown. They're not displayed.

Jason  13:51  
Those are for those who don't have that memorized. Those are the two rows that are always at the bottom, kind of floating off by themselves.

Brian  13:58  
Yeah, if this is the map of the United States. That's Hawaii. It's just kind of off on its own.

Raychelle  14:03  
Well, I have a little pushback about that, because numerically, right? That would be, like, you've removed the Midwest, because it makes your map awkward. Shove it down by Hawaii. Yeah, it makes it more square.

Brian  14:16  
We just take New Mexico and Arizona and just take them out and just say, well, we're going to put those off to the side somewhere.

Brian  14:21  
 Here you go, yeah, yeah.

Brian  14:24  
Well, I hear that there's going to be some discussion about the exclusion of the actinides and lanthanides. Some other parts of the game are you're going to have these, a group of cards that they say, sort of a range in semicircles around each side. That's not really necessary. You could just stack them up, and each of those are going to represent major groups of the elements, so your non metals, or your halogens, this is easier, going to be easier to explain when we talk about how the periodic table works, but basically, groupings of elements are arranged around the sides of the board. So the periodic table is our game board. And what we're going to be doing is you have your little marker, which is an Erlenmeyer flask, which we've already decided there is nothing more scientific than an Erlenmeyer flask. Across the top of the board, you have a series of cards. And these are like, these are your goals. So these are groupings of elements. They can go from two to, I believe, up to, I think it's just three, or is it four? Jason, do you remember? Are there ever ones where it's only ever three, right?

Jason  15:22  
 Yeah, the goal cards only have up to three elements you need to grab them. Okay?

Brian  15:25  
So, and these will be grouping. So, for instance, toxic metals, arsenic and tellurium or mercury or other toxic metals. There's actually two distinct toxic metal cards. There's three different cards that are based on groupings related to steel. So there's iron and carbon, things that you alloy with steel, and then there's stainless steel.

Jason  15:44  
There's the plant one, soil fertility, yeah. Plant ones, NPK. There were a few that had to do with lasers, some precious metals like gold and silver. And I don't think it was gold, silver, platinum, but there was something, oh, the ones used in medicine, like lithium, magnesium and platinum,

Brian  16:01  
yeah. So they've they've gone out and they've found sort of groupings of two or three elements that you can pull together to make some kind of a set or goal. And

Jason  16:09  
I bet this is why the lanthanides and actinides aren't there. Is because there's relatively few groupings of two to three metals that they could put together. And probably also something to do with the way you move on the board. It'd be hard to get to them

Brian  16:20  
I think it's purely about how you move things on the board. It's like, well, how do you jump down to this separate track of elements? But yeah, so those goal cards, they've got little like, fruity pebble markers that you'll mark, like which elements are on the board and where they are. And the game is really about moving your little Erlenmeyer flask to different places on the periodic table. You want to land on that element, and then you get to collect it. So the way that you move is you can move up and down by going up or down. Atomic number, 

Jason  16:45  
well, so okay move you say moving up and down, you're actually moving left and right.

Brian  16:48  
 That's a good point. Yes, thank you. You're moving left and right on the periodic table, that is the one that actually lets you wrap around the board and go all the way from the right to the left, because the periodic table kind of has a Pac Man effect, where when you get to the end of one column, you actually wrap around and show up on the next column. I don't know. Are any of our listeners too young to understand what Pac Man is?

Jason  17:08  
Oh, definitely, 

Raychelle  17:09  
it's made a comeback.

Brian  17:12  
So other things you can do is you can move up and to the right, and this is called increasing ionization energy, or you can move down to the left, which is increasing atomic radii, increasing atomic mass or decreasing atomic mass, is either down into the right or up into the left. And that's it. You will. You get these little energy tokens. You pay one to do one of those trends, move your Erlenmeyer flask one time. You can pay two energy if you want to do a second movement. And you're just trying to collect these elements. You get points for collecting them. You'll have a private secret goal of like, Oh, I'm trying to get, you know, a bunch of ones of different difficulties, or something like that. The only other thing to contend with is there's two ways to finish the game. One is you go all the way through one of those goal stacks of cards of any difficulty. The other is, at the bottom you've got this academic track. So remember, around the side of the board, we've got the groupings of elements. Whenever you land on one, if it's the next one in the series, you kind of move a little marker around, and that lets you move up the academic track

Jason  18:09  
whenever you end your turn on one. So it takes a minimum of eight turns to go all the way around.

Brian  18:15  
Okay, Jason, anything that you feel like I missed?

Jason  18:17  
No, I think that gets it. I like how you described the and this not our word, we got this from a YouTube video. The little markers that say, Wait, markers that say which elements are the ones people want to be going for right now, based on the current goal, cards, look like little fruity pebbles. They like. I would nominate those as the most likely piece to be eaten in this entire game, because they look exactly like some little candy. Yeah. Like, even I look at it, I'm 40 some odd years old, I look at it like this looks kind of tasty.

Brian  18:40  
Like, is that, like, you've got a tide pod effect for the Fruity Pebbles. 

Jason  18:44  
That's what it looks like. So I was like, I definitely this one. Respect the age limit on this. Be careful if you're around little kids, because they do look like they should be sugary and sweet.

Brian  18:52  
So let's see. That'll be a new special category for gaming with science most likely to have pieces want to be eaten. Speaking of which, this is not a very space hungry game. This gets a high score on the bowl of chips factor. There is definitely room for to put a bowl of snacks there. Just make sure that you're not eating the game pieces by mistake.

Brian  19:12  
So that is the basics of the game. Why don't we talk a little bit about the science now? And Rachelle, you get to get a bunch of questions about the periodic table. Is that? Okay? Okay, so my first question is, what is the periodic table? 

Raychelle  19:24  
The periodic table is, you know, what I say to about to students is, we don't make you memorize stuff, because we put all the cool information in a single table, and then we literally post it everywhere on the wall, shower curtain, table cloth wall posters. What we would say are, these are kind of quote, the building blocks, right? And so the periodic table is our quick reference to, what are the build the Legos, the chemistry Legos at our disposal, and it's organized. Of course, you have, you know, people learn about Mendeleev and. Kind of first, you know, kind of to organize it, besides the fact that when you look at it, when you really understand how to read any data table, it becomes even more powerful, right? And so to look at it and realize it's organized, why we've organized it the way we have actually tells us something about how the chemicals behave. Kind of organized. You have columns and rows. And if you're in columns, we like to call those families. There's some similar behavior, but we know with all families, there's going to be the weirdo, the evil one, so it's they've got. I look at a very big table, and I'm like, wow, there's some real characters here. There's real personalities. But with that, you can get an idea of how things will behave and maybe how they'll behave together, what things will avoid each other. And so we've also organized the periodic table. If you go from, say, left to right, you go from metals to non metals. But then there's the fun, hydrogen, right? So hydrogen is in group one.

Brian  21:00  
Yeah, you're hitting a bunch of the questions I already had,

Raychelle  21:02  
yeah, but you have to drop to super extreme temperatures to see that kind of metal behavior of hydrogen. But it is definitely, I mean, it is number one, right? So it goes group one, number one. But what you'll see is periodic tables, especially ones that are often kind of posted in places. They try to be like, Sure, it's in group one, but let's put it up, float it up here, because we don't want people to think that it's gonna, you know, some of the other things in group one, yeah, the sodium, potassium, 

Jason  21:36  
it's not gonna explode when you put it with water, 

Raychelle  21:38  
it's not gonna Yeah, and it doesn't have the same type of behavior as some but then again, it does share behavior where they're, you know, kind of ionization energy, where that that one electron actually pretty easy to boot like energetically, the cost is is low, and that actually dictates some of the chemistry. But we don't see the same type of metallic behavior at kind of the same operational temperatures. But then again, I would say with families is, think about your family members. Do you have shared traits? Sure, but then you always have that one family member who's like, and what are you doing over there? 

Brian  22:14  
Oh, yeah, no, I'm thinking about that right now.

Raychelle  22:18  
So, you know, there, there's also this

Raychelle  22:19  
interesting thing is, you move, you know, down a family sometimes, like they do this with birth order, which, you know, that's not my area, right? But they talk about, what's that older kid versus the middle kids versus the baby? And if you go with more, like light, medium, heavy, you see that there's some real spread in behavior. Now, families are families. They do have an operating kind of, here's our vibe. But even within the families, there can be differences. 

Brian  22:49  
Families are the columns, right?

Raychelle  22:50  
 Families are the columns. Okay, so let's see, so the so the periodic table, everything gets an atomic number, and that is based on the number of protons that you have in your nucleus. So, and actually that means that, like, and we've talked about this before, for all those people who want to discover new elements, I'm sorry all of the spaces are taken. The only place to get anything new is at the very bottom of the list, because we, we know everyone has just one more proton. 

Raychelle  23:16  
But, you know, the fun thing is, is, you know, we have currently 118 confirmed, and people are making there is some. I mean, if you look at some, if you go to any of your alma maters, or people might even remember this from high school, they're like, Wait, did she say 118 because I'm looking at period right, 114 or 112, or 109, right? When you see and you're seeing ones that might be kind of in in parentheses, or ones, it depends on the age of your periodic table, right? And you can actually see that there's been, hey, there's been some exciting updates, right? Yeah. And so that's kind of fun to see that. I do want to back up and say, yeah. What I love about the periodic table too, is, yes, we designate families, right, as being columns. But in to carry my kind of human family. A bit further, there's the family you're born into, and then there's the family you make, right? We have kind of circles of emote, you know, circles of kind of affinity.

Brian  24:08  
Are these out groupings. These are metalloids?

Raychelle  24:10  
These are groupings, right? Like you can have, well, you can have alkali metal, you can have alkali or, you know, you have earth metals. You have your transition metals, which, those are all actually in different families, but they have a big block called transition metals. So it's like, we try to say, Okay, who, which, which clan, gang group are you?

Brian  24:28  
So they're still, they're still to each other in their overall behavior than they are, right?

Raychelle  24:33  
Because you can talk about, oh, I'm a transition metal chemist, yeah, that's a big group, which one, or you can say that, or even an entire field called Organic Chemistry, you're like, so, just carbon, just carbon. But they don't really mean that, right? They might be focused on carbon, carbon bonds, but there's a lot of other like chemistries involved. But yeah, right. They're really exciting. I love, I love a metalloid. I love anybody who's like, I do whatever. On, I can be a metal. I can be a non metal. I adapt. Families are really cool

Brian  25:06  
Oh my gosh. We've touched on we've touched on so many topics I was hoping to cover. Is it okay if I go in with some more specific questions? Yeah, okay. So first of all, if I could just we talked about a couple things there. Let's start with the what are the families and where did their names come from? So in the game, it's alkali metals, alkali earth metals, transition metals, post transition metals, metalloids, halogens and noble gasses, some of those, I guess I get sort of embedded in that question, as you can imagine, is, why are there so many metals, and what makes something a metal versus a non metal?

Raychelle  25:42  
 I mean, I think that that's a really interesting question. I think philosophically, because, you know, I have a PhD and so, and most, most, you know, chemists have a Master's or PhD or bachelor's, is that here's where you get to. The philosophical part is that we try to bin things, and we try, often, to do it in discrete categories, but that doesn't always work, right? And so what we've tried to do with the periodic table, and notice, I am using the royal we you're like, you didn't have a thing to do with the period table!

Brian  26:15  
No, you speak for all chemists, it's fine. 

Raychelle  26:18  
Ooh, is to is, is to find these relationships with chemical properties or chemical behaviors, right? And so we try to say, okay, what are some things that are unique in that group these things together in their chemical behavior, right? And we try, sometimes, to make those bins too rigid: it is a metal. It is a non metal. It is a there and then, and then the metalloids show up and go, really, are you sure

Brian  26:51  
we definitely have the exact same problem in biology all the time where we want things to fit nicely into bins.? And you know what. nature doesn't care about your bins

Raychelle  26:58  
It's a spectrum. And so as you actually look across the Periodic Table, yeah, you know, you can see this beautiful range of metallic behavior. And then we have things that kind of more fall if we think of it as more of a spectrum, and we think about things that are more on the metal. Metal, like what we think about as metals, is like Metallica, 

Brian  27:19  
Iron! Copper!

Raychelle  27:19  
but we think about things, you know, that they're malleable, that they maybe conduct electricity, that's not even all metals, right? But we think about what we think is metal behavior, right? And then you go across the Periodic Table, and like most people, if you ask the common person, is sodium and metal, they'll be like, is this a trick question? What we think of in our mind as being like metallic behavior, non metallic. And then you have, again, you have elements that are like, I do, what I want. I can, you know, and then what, what is a non metal? What do we mean by we're so you're identifying an element by what it's not?

Brian  27:53  
By what it's not? Yeah, I was thinking about that too. It's like, okay, so some of the traits would be things like malleability, conductivity would be things that we think of. But the thing is that those definitions are kind of, it's, well, I know a metal when I see it a little bit 

Raychelle  28:09  
It is. And then what you know, when you get things into groups and you start making compounds, then you you can start making things that you're like, oh, but that now conducts electricity, or gives off sparks, or we can do fun, which, okay, then what are we saying? Is, what are these properties? And then you, and that's the fun thing about science, is we've kind of got this on lock, but then when we're able to manipulate and build things that you're like, Oh, so this now can act like this over here, and that's kind of fun.

Brian  28:41  
I learned recently that there are some alloys that can gain magnetic, that can become magnetic, even if they're made from non magnetic starting materials,

Raychelle  28:51  
right? And so then what does that mean? Like proper, if we've if you define everything by what you think it can do and not do, right? When I mean, this is the philosophical part. That is the grappling of it that keeps, I think, a lot of chemists, when you can like at this top of the show, when you can think, what is something that blew your mind? When you can read something that you're like that is really has shaken What do I understand this thing to be, right? And that's kind of the really fun stuff. Is that even when we think in 2025 we a bit jaded sometimes with scientific thing, but when it comes to the fundamental thing of what do you mean it is that that can still blow your mind is kind of fun. 

Brian  29:34  
Sometimes in chemistry, you're adding one and two and you're getting seven, 

Raychelle  29:38  
which, again, loving it for us, because then you, you know, people think, like, hydrogen bonding, right? They're like, Oh, yeah. The Internet, whatever. We were finding out new things all the time about this interaction. And I'm sure in biology, given the fundamental importance of hydrogen bonding to protein structure,

Brian  29:56  
 to, like, literally the entire thing, like, it's all, yeah, they. That you're like what we, you know, together, your DNA, yeah. 

Raychelle  30:04  
And I think that, you know, when I look at the periodic table, even though we try to give it, you know, firm, you know, there are these columns, are families, and there are blocks, and we have this, is this? What you actually are seeing is a spectrum of properties and behavior, which gives us a lot of dynamic flexibility, right to have, and it also just looking around, going Well, that explains this wild show that we're seeing, right? But, you know, if you like, if you get rubidium, and you give it enough energy of electronic transition is that it emits this beautiful, kind of, hard to describe the color of red, that it's kind of, kind of, I would say that, you know, a purplish red, okay, but not, not quite a burgundy. But there's just something that's really beautiful color. So while rubidium itself, you're like, snooze fest, right in the physical appearance of it. There are these dynamic we can do emission spectrum. It's one of the ways we can characterize all the elements in a periodic table. Or what are the unique electronic transitions? And some are in the visible range that we can see pretty colors, that's fireworks. You're looking at emission spectroscopy, yeah. And luckily, there's beauty parts you can see, and we can make green and yellow and purple and red and really fun stuff. And so even though we might look at the elements and be like, boring, boring, boring, boring, is that, if we put a little bit of energy in, which is what I love, too, about the game, is they got the currency, right? There's no such thing as a free lunch, everything costs. 

Brian  31:39  
Yeah, actually, there's this other conceit in the game where energy is not created or destroyed, it just gets moved around the board. Except it's not true for one specific reason that I think, like in there's one circumstance in a two player game where you actually get to get some new energy out of the box. 

Jason  31:56  
I think that's just because there's not enough energy floating around with only two players for that to work. But honestly, that's such a bad call most of the time. We never even used that move because it's like, just getting one energy for that is just such a bad choice. 

Raychelle  32:09  
See, I think at that point the game should just, like, explode and no, a physicist should just pop out and go, no, yeah.

Jason  32:21  
So actually, I've got some question about some of these odd balls you mentioned. So you said, how, like, in these families, there's always the black sheep, the weirdo one, so there's some ones, I know.

Raychelle  32:31  
So that's a judgment. I shouldn't be that judgmental, but I am.

Jason  32:35  
Okay, they're weird. Yeah, let's, let's put I'm gonna look point. I'm pointing right at Mercury here. It's like, liquid metal room temperature. What is going on there? What about that combination of that family in that row? How on earth do you get something that is a liquid metal at room temperature?

Brian  32:51  
You also got gallium, which is a liquid metal at slightly above room temperature, right? 

Raychelle  32:54  
The minute you put it in your hand

Brian  32:56  
, yeah, right. I want to get some gallium. I want some gallium. Yeah.

Raychelle  32:59  
And I think, like again, but they are the it's no one else in their family. That's it, right? And so doesn't that like? That is, I mean, people, you know, and I am not in a metallic or transition metal chemist or heavy metal chemist, but I could see why people would be absolutely obsessed with mercury or gallium to be like, what is, I mean, it isn't even within its family. Yes, there are shared traits, but even within its families, it's the one that is doing, like, what's happening here, right? And, and then the unique properties that that unfolds, I mean to me that, besides the liquid mercury is that is the high cohesion, right? You, you, quote, spill mercury, you pour it, it's like little bot, and it just rolls around like, and you're just like, it doesn't. It has a lot of cohesion between the atoms where it's not like if you pour water, what a mess, right? It spreads. It wets the surface, true? There is this also chemical interaction where the mercury is like it

Jason  34:00  
It doesn't. It's not touchy feely. It does not like to touch other things.

Raychelle  34:03  
 It does not like to wet. And I like, you know, there isn't this kind of, you know, just distribution of that matter across a large surface area. It's actually like, No, we don't like to hang out with you other people. We want to be by ourselves. And so, like, what are, you know, those are some interesting features. But again, I would come back to every family has, you know, and again, I'm putting my own, but that's how we could understand the periodic table. Is, what are these groups, families? And there's the again, there's so many circles of connectivity where, even when, and oftentimes across the rows, you know, people very much focus on columns. But then when we look at big blocks of behavior, like even we mentioned earlier that lanthanides and the antsides and the lanthanides, right, that's a row that's a different way there. They do have shared behavior, and there's a whole group of chemists that are transition metals, but then their subset is, ah, but we're first row transition metal.

Brian  34:59  
So I guess everybody's got to have their little niche on the table,

Raychelle  35:05  
Well, it turns out that there's unique behavior with that first row transition. So what we're finding out is, even in the, you know, 100 plus odd years we've had, what we would think is the structure of the periodic table is that it also reveals what some of the genius was of binning them in their behavior. We're still learning about the elements. We're still deciding that, hey, yes, there are the column behavior, but there's also row dynamics, but there's also this bigger kind of bigger group behavior that we see. And so I think that's what I also liked about the game, is that it tries to get you to get a bit of exposure to, hey, there's a lot of property. There's a way we can group these things, not just by columns, but we also have to talk about, what are some energies involved, right where they're kind of located. And I think it, hopefully it gives people an idea of this table is organized, yes, by atomic number, right? But the more important thing, at least for as, my opinion, as a chemist, is that it's organized based on function. But as I'm sure, as a biologist, right away, you should be like, and that's structure, right? Yes, is that? And at this stage, though, it's structure at the atomic level, yeah. So you're looking at both. You're getting it's just jam packed full of information on the periodic table.

Brian  36:31  
There's a reason that the periodic table appears on napkins and shower curtains. It's just It's probably one of the most beautiful representations of science, right? One of the, one of the real victories of science is the periodic table. 

Raychelle  36:45  
We got good branding. 

Brian  36:47  
Yeah, great branding, great branding. 

Raychelle  36:49  
And Good job with the color coding. Yeah, I feel like that's the other thing is, like, if we make it color coded,

Brian  36:55  
it's like, I think the the we talked about how the Erlenmeyer flask is the most sciencey thing, DNA, the periodic table, 

Raychelle  37:02  
yep, there are just certain symbols. 

Brian  37:04  
These are the lucky charms of of science. Well, we touched on this a little bit, but I did want to ask you said the first column transition metals. So we've got yttrium, which I know is one that you obviously like, because you use it in your social media, and then scandium, and then you jump down, and those two boxes expand out into entire rows, and like, you've got some interesting players in there, like uranium, Neptunium, Plutonium, how do the Okay? Why are the actinides and lanthanides in quarantine, in their own separate space on the table? And how do they relate to yttrium and scandium, which are not 

Raychelle  37:41  
if you look at the the atomic number right? You you jump from barium, which is group two, and you see a 56 and you're like, super and then you go right down radium, is that, quote, last element in group two, and it is 88 and then all of a sudden, you move to the transition metals, which is right next door. And you see that, Okay, number wise, you like, okay, 57, 89 and then you move again, and you're like, am I going insane, or is that it goes 57, 72 Yeah, it goes 89 104, now I'm sure that there are, you know, people will say, oh, there's good they did. They wanted it to be rectangular, yeah.

Brian  38:23  
They wanted it to fit on a single page.

Raychelle  38:24  
It is a space saving move, yeah, fit on it, which makes us, you know, fit on a single printable sheet and and sometimes, depending on who's produced the periodic table, like, if you look at the NIST periodic table, or one of the great versions, which is one I use a lot in my classroom.

Jason  38:44  
And this is like National Institute of what standards and technology?

Raychelle  38:48  
Yes, so NIST is National Institute Standards and Technology is that they actually do this cool thing, which they show the ribbon effect of after barium and radium, because where it's split is also very interesting is that some periodic tables will split it at LA, you know, and AC. And what the NIST periodic table does is it's actually shows you a ribbon that kind of floats from the two and then the ribbon connects it to the lower so that people will clue into the fact of No, no, these, these should actually go smack right here, which would push the periodic table

Brian  39:28  
way, way, way, WAY longer, way, way, 

Raychelle  39:31  
like a baguette, yeah,

Jason  39:33  
long and thin.

Raychelle  39:35  
And so I, you know, it's a space saving move. I mean, it makes sense printing wise and kind of to condense it, but what it does is sometimes almost out of sight, out of mind.

Brian  39:48  
I mean, that's very true in this game, which we're going to come back to for the nitpick section. 

Jason  39:53  
And I have a question about this, actually, so my you mentioned how the structure of the periodic table is due to the structure of the elements. And I Want to confirm if I've got this in my head, right, because I seem to remember from high school chemistry, the reason why you have the jumps where you do, why you have the number in rows, is because it's it's not the proton. So as much as it's the electrons that orbit around them, it's like the first like layer you can stick electrons in. Only has space for two, which is why there's only two elements in the first one, and then, like the next layer. 

Raychelle  40:22  
So we have a numeric order, which would be, why, if you count over, you should have, you know, goes up by one, but you're absolutely right where, then you can get to the principal quantum number. And if you count down where you have, you will go 1, 2,3, 4, and that is the one, like you would say with. And orbitals are not actual physical locations. They are probability distribution maps of where the electrons should be,

Jason  40:47  
We are not getting into Quantum mechanics this episode

Brian  40:52  
We gotta find a different game to talk about that for sure,

Raychelle  40:54  
but that quantum energy level is is sometimes on the periodic table that what again, is so jam packed full of information. But besides the group number, which would be across the top left to right, there are numbers that go from that first row right down and it's seven. And remember that the lanthanides and the actinides are actually six and seven, because they should slot back in. Those are the energy levels, right? So like when talking about electronic configuration, which again, is our construction of trying to organize spatially, where are the probability distribution maps? Is we say that you have the lowest energy to the highest energy, so one through seven, and that's also that great organization is also telling you about, okay, where spatially these things are. So there is both organization on, on, on the entire atomic level, right where we talk about where the two big subatomic particles that we tend to spend a lot of time on, which would be proton number, yeah, and electron number, or electron density. That's a really, it's a fun I mean, when you look at it, we often, again, focus on atomic number, but you're absolutely right. There is. It is also telling you about electron density, which gets us back to the trend, right? Because you're talking about ionization energy. Yeah, it's one of the big trends, atomic radius, which has to deal with both, well, the interaction right between the pull of you have all these electrons which hate each other, but also attracted to this dense positive core like and then the more you add and the more you know, then you get this kind of size. So you actually have a couple different properties that are dealing with the fact of you have to look at the holistic approach of the atom. You have to look at the protons, the electrons. You have to look at the interplay between them, if you try to remove them, if you add more, if you have less. And so that's what you're looking at.

Brian  42:50  
 Do we have to look at the neutrons? Or can we just ignore the neutrons?

Raychelle  42:53  
No, I love I love a neutron moment because they're sly. They're very massive. I love that because they're sly. They're just like, we don't have a charge, so no one, we're just going to be over here. They're massive, like, just, you know, they the electrons are puny, but they're negative, so everyone focuses on them, yeah, they're also important in bonding. I shouldn't dismiss them, but, but the neutrons, right? You get isotopes which are so critical, you know, and so telling. I love isotopes because they are snitches.

Jason  43:23  
Can you define what an isotope is?

Brian  43:25  
 Wait, wait, I want to, I want to jump back, and then I want to come back to neutrons. So we've got the atomic number is the number of protons, right? Yep, but the number of protons determines the number of electrons, and all chemistry really is about those electrons, right? And where they are? No, it's not the electrons

Raychelle  43:43  
I mean you want to reduce, You want to reduce an entire field to one subatomic particle. Is that? Is that what we're doing? Okay?

Brian  43:52  
Let's do it this way. What percentage of chemistry is defined by the electrons?

Raychelle  43:56  
I wouldn't even but that's, but that's still trying to reduce it down to a single particle, when really we got to talk about relationships

Brian  44:02  
Okay, I guess I'm breaking the whole thing that you just said about the holistic nature of an individual atom is, electrons are important. Protons are important. Neutrons are important too. 

Raychelle  44:11  
If it was just electrons like that doesn't get us to Why do certain bonds form and others don't? Okay? So the electrons, I'm not saying they're not important, but we can't ignore that. There is a lot of other stuff going on. We said with ionization energy, there are trends, right? If you the first group removing that first electron, relatively easy peasy. You try to remove the second electron, though, we're gonna fight that is the energy cost jumps enormously, and that's because you have got, you know, the the force right of all that positive charge now you've removed an electron. But what's actually happened too is that attractive force between those subatomic particles is actually even more like trying to remove a second electron. That energy cost is prohibitive. And anyone who plays the game and wants to try it, I'm not even sure you can do it, because it's like a first ionization. It's just going with first ionizations across the trend. But as students will recall, if you try to remove from lithium the second electron, good luck. I mean, you can do it, but it is going to cost you an enormous amount of energy, and that is not only about the electron. That's about the pull of the nucleus is now that attractive force, because you actually have more positive than negative, because you've tipped the balance, and now we're pulling off the second electron is much harder. Is that just an electron problem? Because that sounds like that's a that's an atomic

Jason  45:42  
Yeah, yeah. And I've, I've got another one that I learned at Dragon Con this past year. And Raychelle, I don't remember if you were on this panel. So we talked about isotopes, which is where you have extra neutrons, or fewer neutrons in the nucleus. Apparently, if you use heavy water, so yes, water where the hydrogen has extra neutrons in it, yeah, it tastes sweet. It actually changes the flavor of the water because it changes some interaction of like this. The way the water behaves and how it affects our sweet receptor. 

Brian  46:10  
I think that our sweet receptors are broken, the number of things that are not sugar, that tastes sweet. I mean, artificial sweeteners, water, lead, yeah. I mean, come on.

Raychelle  46:20  
But I think that that, again, that tells you right the bait and switch. But I think so. Isotopes are you have the option of differing numbers of neutrons, and you can get to heavier. We often say that, okay, what's the and it's about probability. What's the one that's most frequently occurring? And then you might have a  soupçon of others, although there are some elements where it's nearly, you know, it's actually like a two thirds, 1/3 or a 50/50, split. But so you have those kind of variety and and with water, again, taste is perception. So you you gave people that, and you asked them to rate it. So part of it is perception. And I'm sure all of the people doing human studies trial, when you ask people those questions, that's got to be done in a very specific way. But the science of it is, you know that that even that slight change in mass and and how you know the compound and the receptor interact there, there is this potential that you have this difference in how it's perceived by the taster now, most of the time with isotopes, especially forensically, what we can kind of use them for is because we have mapped out we know so much about the statistical portion right of all of these elements and their isotopes. We've also mapped out the world in a lot of isotopic abundance for some key elements like oxygen, hydrogen, carbon, and the proportion, say, in different ocean waters, in different soil types, in different parts of the world, and also different elements like strontium, that it can actually be really helpful when you're trying to link up. Where did this come from in the world? And one big way that it's used in forensics is identifying, say, there was a really great special issue in a forensic science journal about identifying civilians and combatants that were involved in kind of actions in World War One, and they had a lot of, unfortunately, huge mass graves, right? Large numbers of casualties, but then trying to match people up. Now, when we have the technology to do so, to do identification, sure we have DNA, we can get but you still have to, then I still need enough information to get a standard from a living family member. You've got to, you've got to narrow it down. If we literally are looking at this open grave in Flanders or something, and you're like, Well, where are the combatants from? Where should I even look to get this information? So they were using isotopic abundance to say, hey, in the formative years, when your bones are really growing and forming and you're really taking uptake of those elements, certain key elements, turns out Canada, and not only Canada, but a particular region to Canada they were able to identify going back, well, we need to go to the Canadian Armed Forces, and we need to say, Okay, who was in this part of this country in this time, and that so helped narrow it down, right that they can then say, have a discrete amount of samples they can collect with DNA, and say it needs to be Canadian forces deployed here. From here, it really helps narrow it down, because of we have so much information on the probability distribution of those elements. So to me, isotopes, they're the MVPs. They help us track so much stuff. Forensically, I have a special place in my heart. There's certain elements that denote that, hey, you had a lot of seafood or access to kind of sea based stuff versus, Oh, you were probably having more of grains that. And then grains, you know, where do we get most of those from in this country? And then if more cattle or more beef, so even that can still be really helpful. And. Help kind of point to what do you have access to, sometimes, mostly, again, your really formative years when the when the bones are really on the uptake, and so that can still be really helpful. It's super helpful too. With tracking, this is going to sound weird, but linking together drugs, certain, right? If you're growing, say, like cocaine, natural product, even if it's purely synthetic. What was the water source used for that synthesis? What were the solvents where they purchased some of these things from that could still and if you're trying to link up, say, a particular to see is this all the same kind of manufacturing chain? You're not even trying to perhaps localize it to where in the world is Carmen Sandi-, no, you're trying to link it

Brian  50:44  
up notorious drug lord. Carmen Sandiego,

Raychelle  50:46  
yeah, that I did not say that do not come for me, Disney or whoever Conglomerate is, is, are these batches produced in a very similar way where they you know this, this huge distribution. Is the kilo found here? Is it chemically linked to the kilo over here? Interesting, right? And so that kind of information, besides just a good general chemical scan of what compounds and what proportion the isotopic abundance can also be very revealing about what are the water sources, what are the solvent compositions that might have been employed? And so, you know, that's why sometimes I joke that isotopes are snitches, but I mean that in the best way.

Brian  51:31  
So isotopes, same number of protons, increase neutrons, and I think I've had this explained that, like biology is lazy and will favor the lighter version of that isotope. So you'll see accumulation of lighter carbon, for instance, 

Jason  51:47  
I think that depends, because, I mean, one of the things I think Raychelle was mentioning is you can tell like carbon source. So corn uses a certain type of photosynthesis different from like wheat and rice, and they end up with different carbon isotope ratios from that. So you can tell if you had a more corn based diet or more wheat and rice. And I know here in the US, it turns out that we're all eating secondhand corn, because most of the corn we grown is actually fed to animals, yeah, pigs and cows and chicken and so we're getting all like our diet when you're if you're here in the US and you're eating beef or chicken or pork, you're probably actually eating corn based stuff, as opposed to some other and you can tell that in the the ratios of the carbon that are in your body,

Raychelle  52:28  
yeah, I mean, and also in food fraud, it's a big thing butter from grass fed cows. And you're like, first of all, this better be butter, not margarine, because we have real strict laws, right? But also, you've said a certain type of feeding for this cow. Well, isotopes, interesting, will really clock that. And so it's become too a way that

Jason  52:50  
listeners didn't see this, but she put it the whole like, point up, pointed her eyes like, I got my eyes on you

Raychelle  52:55  
I got my eyes on you, right? So isotopes will help us get real ideas about sources of stuff, but it all, it all comes back down to probability. We have low probability. We have high probability stuff. And that's why, you know, getting these backgrounds, you've got to have a good set of what's, what is the probability for, just like this area, this background, they've also done this with we saw in certain parts of the world, historically, like, lead pipes were the like, and, I mean, like, Roman Right? Like, they were like, Oh, the fall of the Roman Empire, which, by the way, is never on my mind on a daily basis. But the fall of the Roman Empire, it's because there were so many lead pipes. Or, like, you know, there's if a person was, a historical person, was poisoned. You're like, oh, it's arsenic. Well, you also have to get the background of where was the person at, because there's actually arsenic just that appears in your person. There's also, if you're buried in the ground, what was the soil? Did it leach in? And so one of the first things they'll do is, okay, well, what's, what's the background? Here's the target of the person, we think, is poison. Now get samples from everybody else in the graveyard. Well, not everybody, but some proportion, right? And then what's the background so you can get Okay, is this actually a signal? Is it actually significantly greater, gotcha, or is this just like the norm?

Brian  54:16  
Awesome. I think we should probably start wrapping up at this point. I did want to ask Raychelle, do you have a favorite board game that you like to play?

Raychelle  54:23  
 Yes, well, I grew up in a family that played board games and but I'm gonna go super retro, and I'm gonna go with monopoly.

Brian  54:31  
Okay, all right, we haven't had anybody say monopoly yet. 

Raychelle  54:33  
I gonna saw monopoly because my family, we would play Monopoly and monopoly like we would be like, we're never playing this game again, because we would always fight. It never went well. It really reveals a lot about how greedy people are and how closely they will bankrupt you. But on the other hand, there was just something about that game that we you could just It was wild, like I had some of the funnest nights was playing and just realizing how crafty, especially I'm like my mom is viscous, and she is the nicest lady I know, but she will be like, I love you. I'm taking all of your hotels. 

Brian  55:16  
Actually let's, let's move into our nitpick corner, because I think it's time for that. This is where we do, well, actually, or this isn't quite right, or we love this game, but so Rachelle, go. You have something teed up, I can tell.

Raychelle  55:28  
Well, you know, part of it too was the groups they chose. Like, the was it, they're called Goal Cards, the, 

Brian  55:35  
yes, the groupings of elements,

Jason  55:37  
 yeah, like, two or three elements that have some common theme to them that help you collect points,

Brian  55:41  
 yeah? Like, toxic, yeah? Just something that connects these in terms of how we use them,

Raychelle  55:45  
 yeah, I think. But again, I mean, I was like, these are the ones they use? but I also, I just look at the periodic table based on my I'm an analytical chemist. I'm a forensic Chemist. I look at it in a different way, as we all should. So that's a very petty kind of thing. But also, again, they booted some of the coolest elements. They were like, we don't want, we don't want these ones down here.

Brian  56:07  
So literally, uranium is not on the list.

Jason  56:13  
That maybe they were saving that for the expansion. The trend now is that you release a board game and you already have the first three expansions planned. Maybe they have the lanthanide and actinide expansion,

Raychelle  56:23  
then that is flip the script. And I'm like, brilliant, because I would get it just to be like, is that in expansion pack one? One like that would be so cool. Also, the wraparound, there's only one trend that lets you wrap around. They were like, You can't do that with any of the other trends. And I was like, watch me, yeah.

Jason  56:44  
So my, my nitpick is a little bit related to that, and just has to do with the goal cards, because we noticed this as we were going through the elements are not represented equally. 

Brian  56:52  
No, not even close

Jason  56:53  
some elements show up time again and again and again, and some elements you'll never see on a goal card. And I just would have, I'd like, I mean, realize there's only so many things you can make groups of that your average consumer would actually recognize, but it still be nice to have those spread out. And it did feel like the difficulty of collecting the goals was not correlated to the number of points you got. I didn't do a thorough investigation of that, but it seems like it should be like, okay, the harder goals, like goals difficulty two, three and four all require three elements each. So there should be, it should require, like, more moves to get the ones at level four and then level two. And I assume there are, but it didn't really feel like there were definitely times where, like, oh, in this one turn, I can collect the level three goal just with my normal moves. 

Brian  57:39  
Some of those goal cards were weird. It was like, the the element in its group with the lowest heat capacity. It's like, you say that these are things that average people know that is a weird like, I had to look that up. It's like, what does that mean? It's like, I know water has anyway. My my nitpick is similar to Raychelle's is the exclusion of the lanthanides and the actinides. But that's not right, is it? How have you been saying it?

Raychelle  58:02  
 no, no, don't. Do not go with me there, 

Brian  58:04  
okay. All right. All right, sorry, sorry,

Jason  58:06  
I think we've determined the elements are like dinosaurs. It doesn't matter how you say. 

Brian  58:11  
There's not an official Pronunciation Guide. That may very well be true. The thing is, okay, I understand the utility. I understand why they did it. I still think they have a booklet, like all genius games, the science in the game, it would have been very easy to put a full periodic table in there, and they didn't even put it there. It's like, you know, your game is periodic you got the periodic table. Just show one periodic table where you haven't excluded these. Do you know what I mean, just take one page, 

Raychelle  58:37  
and I would have liked to see some Goal Cards. I mean, again, this is just a judgment call, but if you're building, if you're using this game in a classroom or in some kind of a science camp thing, I think a fun thing would be like, what is the expansion pack that you would build? Right? Because then you might have people be like, you know, what? What about like, I move diagonally? It's like, Yeah, but if I want to move along the metalloids, you're going to have to do a diagonal move. Like, what are some fun? What's some new rules? And what's a new expansion pack? Like, talking about, you know, your things that are naturally liquids at ambient, what we define as ambient temperature, things that are gasses. What is the fun expansion packs and groups that they would come up with? Like, what are your biologically significant? You know, sometimes there's tons of elements on the periodic table. And, you know, you get to biology, and you're like, these seven, because then, then you prime people to think like, and they're surprised when you have zinc that shows up and is critical, right?

Brian  59:33  
I mean, it's CHON, it's CHON, let's be it's carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen. Phosphorus gets to play to

Raychelle  59:40  
Like, it's like, going to gap and getting khaki pants in a black shirt. You're like, again, you're like, 

Brian  59:46  
but they're the Lego bricks of everything. 

Raychelle  59:49  
But, yeah, but we there's a reason for that. What are the fundamentals, right? What are the key things you have?

Brian  59:55  
Either new rules or new game, new goal cards would be really fun, right? Yeah? Like, hey, come up with some new goal cards, 

Raychelle  1:00:00  
new goal cards, new what are different trends? Maybe there are people that want to talk about, hey, what are some different trends? And I think that that's the fun thing about this game, is even when you're critical about a game and people like, Well, I would have done this, and I will then do it, yeah, for sure. Then you come up with the modification. Because then, especially in a teaching tool like this, or even a fun game, in order to come up with an expansion pack, new goal cards, new rules. That means you know a hell of a lot about it, and my master plan to trap you into learning chemistry has, in fact, succeeded,

Brian  1:00:36  
all right. Well, I think this is again, Rachelle, you are wonderful at helping us transition between sections, as the conversation just kind of goes, but why don't we move into grades? Because I think we're talking about what we like about this game. I am happy to go first. I think that for the science here, I'm trying to decide how much I want to ding it for the actinide lanthanide thing. And I think I'm going, I'm actually, I'm not going to dock it. I think that the intentionality is there. I think that the practice using the periodic table, because that's really what this is. We the periodic table is our game board. We've had other games where the periodic table was just where you kept track of your score. Here, it's all about the periodic table. And you learn a lot about the periodic table just by playing the game. You got to when the new goal card comes up, he's like, Okay, where is this element? Right? Like, without even realizing it, playing this game, you are practicing and familiarizing yourself with how the periodic table is laid out, where things are found, how they relate to one another. I have no issue giving it an A on science. I think for fun, I did enjoy it. It's quick. I even beat Jason by one point, which has never happened before in the entire gaming with science, every game that we've played, with the exception of one bonus episode, this is the first time I legitimately beat him by one point. So it should be more fun for me for that reason. But actually, no, I'm still probably just going to give it a B. I don't think this is going to enter into my regular roster. 

Jason  1:01:59  
Yeah, I'll agree. I'll agree with both those. I will give it an A for science. I think that it represents what it wants to represent. Well, I think you can't play this game without learning about the periodic table and chemistry, including the grouping of elements for the goals. I think is an interesting thing that helps you think about some stuff. Also just the trends of like, Oh, if I move this direction, that is increasing ionization energy, if I move this direction, things get the radius gets bigger, like these properties of atoms that I don't usually think about because I'm not a chemist. You can't play the game without becoming familiar with them. So I think A for science is perfectly fine. I'd also put it a B for gameplay and fun, 

Brian  1:02:35  
because I beat you 

Jason  1:02:36  
No, actually. So just because, when I played, and I actually, I did do the like test run myself before we played it together. And both times I felt like, once I was like, four or five turns is like, Okay, I now understand the game. Now it's just the process of playing it out. Felt like the strategic depth of it that I usually go for games is not quite there. I again, put it as B, I would not be opposed to playing it. But I'm probably not going to go for this as my my choice pick.

Brian  1:03:04  
 I think this is an excellent game for the classroom. I really do easy and quick to learn, quick to play, and like really, just without even realizing it, you are learning about the periodic table. You have to 

Jason  1:03:15  
 now. Raychelle, what do you think 

Raychelle  1:03:19  
I'm gonna go with the B minus?

Jason  1:03:20  
Oh, wow, okay. Oh, the chemist has weighed in,

Raychelle  1:03:25  
no, but I think what I found, yeah, sure, there's the missing parts of periodic table, but I was like, why is this called an academic track? True, like, but also, like, the goal cards, but that I'm just like, but that's that gets to a personal preference that's not really about, okay, the quality of the game. There are other games that are very popular that I'm like, not for me, right? Like, so, but what I could see, and I would, I would give it, I would move it into the A category, is that there is, is using it in the classroom, and then having giving students the freedom to Modify and Expand the game. Because I think that the potential of the game is for them to do what we're doing is to really be critical to think about gameplay, but also to think about how would I modify, revise, expand, correct. And I think there's a real useful power in that. 

Brian  1:04:23  
So as a lesson coupled to critical peer review, this would be an A

Raychelle  1:04:27  
yes. And I think that that that part. And also, can we talk about the little I love, an earlenmeyer flask I love, like the gate, like the tokens and the energy. I think the energy tokens, too is everything costs. There is no so I there is a lot of parts that I like. So maybe I am a as, maybe, wow, maybe I agree with my students. I'm a harsh grader. Maybe,

Brian  1:04:52  
maybe, maybe this should be a B and not a b minus that.

Raychelle  1:04:57  
I think you're right. I will, I will modify. look at me. Look at the growth. I will say 

Brian  1:05:06  
you haven't had a chance to play it yet. So did you want to try to give it a maybe not a fun but interested in playing?

Raychelle  1:05:12  
 I watched the videos about the game. Yeah, I would. I think actually I would like to play the game, because I'm wondering if some of my harshness is because of just trying to wrap my head around about, like this seemed kind of a bit awkward about Wait, there it goes. There's a stuff, and I'm I'm watching it being played is very different than being in it and actually having the tactile experience.

Jason  1:05:37  
 All right, so we need to wrap up, Raychelle, where can people find you? 

Raychelle  1:05:40  
Ah, you can find me on the crime ridden streets of DC. No, it's not. It's we're at a 30 year low, everybody. But no, you can find me on social media, radium, vitrium, and also doctor a video on Tiktok.

Brian  1:05:55  
You also write for I was, I was looking on your Tiktok. It links to some opinion pieces.

Raychelle  1:06:01  
Yeah, I write a column, a forensic science column called Trace analysis, where, if you want to learn more about like, I literally have written about, like, isotopes helping crack a butter fraud case, and and and vampire DNA work in a graveyard. Yes, it is true. Salem, witch trials. So what's the forensic science there? So check out my column, trace analysis at chemistry world for all things creepy science and crime ridden.

Brian  1:06:31  
 That's awesome. And then, do you do Dragon Con? Every year?

Raychelle  1:06:33  
 I have been doing it every year. So I was on that panel Jason about the weird kind of physics things, which was kind of fun, because I'm like, how am I on this column? This on this panel, but yes, I plan to be back next year doing more weird stuff. 

Brian  1:06:48  
All right, we're trying to collect people from each of the tracks at Dragon Con. 

Raychelle  1:06:52  
That would be awesome. Yes, yes. 

Brian  1:06:55  
All right, I think with that, we should probably wrap it up. 

Raychelle  1:06:58  
So fun to talk to you guys. 

Brian  1:07:00  
Thank you for joining us. I hope you have a great month and great games. 

Jason  1:07:03  
And as always, everyone have fun playing dice with the universe. See ya. 

Brian  1:07:08  
This has been the gaming with Science Podcast copyright 2025 listeners are free to reuse this recording for any non commercial purpose, as long as credit is given to gaming with science. This podcast is produced with support from the University of Georgia. All opinions are those of the hosts, and do not imply endorsement by the sponsors. If you wish to purchase any of the games that we talked about, we encourage you to do so through your friendly local game store. Thank you and have fun playing dice with the universe. 

Transcribed by https://otter.ai