Here’s an interesting site I stumbled upon a while back. A former chemist by the name of Theo Gray has made a very nice wooden table that is a periodic table. Not only that, but under each square he has a sample of each of the elements! It’s not complete of course, since you just can’t get your hands on many of the Actinide elements, and even a few others like Technitium and Astatine have no stable isotopes and are very radioactive. (For example, under Astatine he has a radiation sybol with this heading, “This unavailable element is represented by a radiation hazard symbol. If we had a visible quantity on display here, you would be dead.”)
I think this is a really neat idea, and I wish this idea would spread to more science museums and the like. Evidently he now has a small business where he prepares similar displays for museums, I hope it catches on. I remember my interest in the sciences as a child being piqued by my father taking me and my brothers to ‘hands on’ museums with all kinds of science exibits.
It’s strange to think that the vast majority of elements are all metals: only the 19 or so in the upper right-hand corner plus Hyrdogen are otherwise. Also even more rare are liquids: only Mercury is a liquid at room temperature (and pressure), and the next closest is Gallium, which melts very easily at 86 degrees F. The only gases are the halogens, the noble gases, and Hydrogen, Oxygen and Nitrogen. Every thing else is a solid.