Mendeleev's Dream

Description

What is the universe made of? It took humankind thousands of years just to formulate a way to ask the question-with the first rigorous study of matter's "ingredients" appearing in czarist Russia. This program tells the story of Dmitri Mendeleev, the chemist and inventor who devised the periodic table of the elements-vastly improving our understanding of the building blocks of the cosmos. Presented by British author Adam-Hart Davis, the film explores some of the groundwork laid by Mendeleev's predecessors, including Robert Boyle and Sir Humphry Davy, then describes how the Russian pioneer analyzed data and detected patterns that enabled him to group the known 63 elements into families based on their properties and their increasing atomic weight. Viewers also learn how Mendeleev made predictions about elements that had not yet been discovered, predictions that proved extremely accurate.

Runtime

20 min

Series

Subjects

Contributor

Geography

Genre

Date of Publication

[2011], c2002

Database

Films on Demand

Direct Link

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