How Mendeleev’s Dream Helped Him Invent the Periodic Table
Mendeleev was a Russian chemist who was interested in finding a way to classify the elements based on their properties and atomic weights. He tried different methods of arranging the elements, but none of them seemed to work. One night, he had a dream that inspired him to create his famous periodic table. Here is how he described his dream in his own words:
I saw in a dream a table where all elements fell into place as required. Awakening, I immediately wrote it down on a piece of paper, only in one place did a correction later seem necessary.
— as mentioned in the book Mendeleyev’s Dream: The Quest for the Elements by Paul Strathern
The dream showed him a pattern that he had not noticed before: when the elements were ordered by increasing atomic weight, their properties repeated periodically. He realized that this was a natural law that governed the behavior of the elements. He also left some gaps in his table, predicting that new elements would be discovered to fill them. He even predicted some of their properties based on the patterns he observed.
Mendeleev’s dream was not a random occurrence, but a result of his subconscious mind working on the problem that he had been trying to solve for a long time. His dream was based on his previous knowledge and observations of the elements, but it also revealed something new and unexpected. His dream was a creative breakthrough that changed the course of chemistry and science.
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