this post was submitted on 06 Jul 2025
1273 points (100.0% liked)
Greentext
6699 readers
1177 users here now
This is a place to share greentexts and witness the confounding life of Anon. If you're new to the Greentext community, think of it as a sort of zoo with Anon as the main attraction.
Be warned:
- Anon is often crazy.
- Anon is often depressed.
- Anon frequently shares thoughts that are immature, offensive, or incomprehensible.
If you find yourself getting angry (or god forbid, agreeing) with something Anon has said, you might be doing it wrong.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
That, and teachers really fucking hate being called out on something for some reason.
All my teachers were fine with it honestly :3 at least after primary school.. if you corrected them they might've given you extra credit
But the general notion of saying something correct and people saying that that's wrong, and not knowing why still stands
I asked my science teacher why and how the periodic table was setup like it was, I got "that's how it's setup"
But why, there as to be a reason
That's just the way they made it
Yeah because they have to have gone by something what is that something
That's just the way they did, stop asking questions (please don't fucking learn in here)
Godamn that pissed me off.
Really? We got a detailed breakdown of why the periodic table is the way it is
Yeah, turned me off to science at that age too which sucks because I was pretty into it.
in case you still care: the periodic table is arranged primarily by the chemical properties of its elements (mainly electronegativity, i.e. how much energy it takes to add/remove an electron to/from the atom) and also by their mass.
Huh? It's sorted by number of electrons/protons (atomic number) the mass is dependent on that and the number of neutrons.
The eight main groups are based on the number of electrons missing for the atom to reach a full valence shell. Once it is full (8th group, noble gasses) it starts a new Period (row). I'm not sure how the other groups are chosen (probably some quantum physics that I never had in chemistry class). After looking it up Wikipedia says it just keeps going that way.
Electronegativity describes how much it "wants" to attract negative charges and doesn't affect the order (Flourine has the highest and is in group 7). I think you may have confused it with ionization energy which would certainly match my understanding of the top half of the periodic table and probably does work for the lower half too now that I think about it.
The groups tend to have similar properties but that is not why they are sorted that way. Hydrogen for example is quite different from other elements in group one. The colours are probably better for finding common properties.
Have a look through the history section. The concept of periodicity substantially predates the quantisation of the atom. The modern table certainly considers atomic orbitals to be key, but the groups were absolutely created based on common properties.
The table that does it that way is a complete mess but I guess it was a good idea and got some things right.
They first started doing it with valence shells in 1864, Mendeleev had a pretty close one based on atomic weights in 1871 and correctly predicted that there were missing elements based on valences + weights. The atomic numbers which determine the valences appear to have been discovered about 40 years later.
I guess you are correct but I think the question was about the modern table.
I do friend, I ended up looking into a few years later/have other teachers explain it but I never had that spark about it again
Too proud to say "I don't know, I'll look it up and tell you tomorrow".
Yeah, that wouldve been a great opportunity to get me further interested.
I have never been in a job where "I don't know" is an acceptable answer, but I've always been in a job where "I don't know, but I can find out for you" always is.
Once I got into Gifted teachers were like that. My first couple years in normie classes suuuucked.
Then in Gifted the bullies got much smarter. Fun times.
You had an extraordinary school experience.
Maybe :3 I think my school wasn't that highly ranked nationally, but I don't know how others were in terms of the teachers so can't compare.. It definitely had a lot of other issues tho haha
Teachers and parents. So many tend to double down when you point out their mistakes.
"I'm the adult so tnat means I'm right and you're wrong"
All they got in life is their self-declared superiority over literal children