Here’s an ongoing project where I intend to catalog abuse of The Periodic Table. Please add to The Periodic Table Abuse Project by alerting me of abuse!

The Periodic Table is a beautiful, ordered, organized thing, and whilst debate continues to rage about certain aspects of it, the table’s core appeal remains timeless.

So, why do people abuse the table so often?

On one hand we have the “The Periodic Table of…“, abuse. These ‘tables’ are those that collect related pieces of data and then ‘organize’ them in the shape of the periodic table. The biggest issue here is that the data are not arranged in a manner that is in the spirit of, or consistent with, the original. For example, when there is no apparent relationship between the pieces of information that appear in each column and each row, the periodic table is ‘abused’. One such example is The Periodic Table of Texting that appears to be nothing more than an alphabetical arrangement of texting terms. A perhaps less egregious example is The Periodic Table of Beer, that at least groups related beer styles in columns.

Generally, I am not collecting ‘The Periodic Table of…‘ examples here, partly because this has been done before, but mainly because I am looking for more specific abuse other than just using the table as a template for organization. Having said that, I certainly will consider such tables in terms of symbol abuse, but I won’t consider them if they do not abuse symbols such as The Periodic Table of Elephants. It’s a fine line, and I expect I will be inconsistent on occasion – bear with me!

In time, and as I collect more examples, I think that the abuse will need organized into sub-categories and probably displayed differently that I have below. I’m thinking of a few titles for sub-categories of abuse already such as; symbol abuse, atomic number abuse, mass number abuse, organizational abuse, typos etc. Anyway, for now, here’s what we have so far.

The Subzero ice-cream parlor in Indianapolis invent an element, and get the atomic numbers all wrong. Calcium in my ice-cream I can handle (and expect), but a large dose of cobalt, too? No thanks. Thanks to Joseph Wargo for the spot.

Mercury on your chicken wings? Buffalo Wild Wings thinks it’s a great idea! Honestly? I’m less sure. @compoundchem points this one out.

Not content with only using mercury to poison us, Buffalo Wild Wings suggests more elemental additions! Another from @compoundchem.

Lowercase? Uppercase? Who cares? Does helium think it is more important than the rest of the elements? Thanks to @TeacherChemist for this one who also reports it corrected.

@WPIBurdette systematically takes down a viral Periodic Table. Looks like LSD had an influence on more than just the appearance of this table. Click here for the full detail of the take-down.

@_razza points out that her Periodic Table mug needs a little TLC (typo loving care). Better than having thallium on the inside though!

We Love Jelly look like they’ve been hitting the cocktails a little hard. This CANNOT end well. More new elements? I don’t think so, although ‘Pornstar Martini‘ is an interesting angle on Promethium! Thanks to @sbrattonuk for the share.

The part 1 of the coffee cocktail lab is gonna give you a headache either way! If it’s all the same to you, I’ll keep cerium out of my coffee thank-you very much, and you’d better drink that meitnerium infused drink quickly, since the half-life is pretty short. Cheers to @KazMitch for the two part warning.

Here’s part 2 of the unfeasible coffee concoctions from @KazMitch. One problem here is that Cc means two different things …errr…. well, that and a bunch of other stuff. At least there’s plenty of Ca in that milky Cappuccino, but I’ll pass on the chlorinated coffee, the radioactive americium or curium spiked beverages, and einsteinium with my caffeine seems a little risky to me.

You’d have to be pretty ballsy to call out the Royal Institution …… especially when you consider the abuse listed below! But at least I am in good company!

Whoops! A little close to home for my liking! My defense? They were suggested by the web designer folks and I liked them. The irony, it doth drip. Mea culpa.

There’s got to be a TON of these Breaking Bad spoofs out there. This one is for the TV show/movie/TV movie, Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman, made famous by actress Jane Seymour. Strangely though, I feel that there really ought to be elements with the symbols Dr and Qu, even if they aren’t allowed to adopt the atomic and mass numbers of Br and Ba.

The Miracle of Science Bar & Grill in MA really ought to know better! Thanks for NomNomDePlume on Reddit for this addition. There’s just a whole bunch of stuff I don’t want on skewers, sandwiches or anything else. BTW – what’s up with diatomic vanadium, boron and carbon?? Photo Credit.

The Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago makes a terbium whoops! (as of 04/16/15). Thanks to @JennyE_OHare for the contribution.

These magnets from Target simply, errr…. miss the target! Thanks to Sheri Furby for the heads up on these.

Honestly, I know that these things happen, but this is horrible for the front cover of a chemistry textbook. Thanks to Casey Gillett for the spot.

Matthew Kennedy alerts me to some serious abuse in terms of symbols, shape and the insertion of icons by the JCC in Columbus, Ohio. Yikes!

The folks at MOLECULE-R do all kinds of bad things in the name of Molecular Gastronomy – whatever THAT is! (No, I had never heard of it, either). You too can experience Gelification, Spherification, Emulsification and ‘Other Transformations‘!

The MOLECULE-R folk extend the symbols to include ‘T’ for Tools – enough said!

More Walter White nonsense, this time from HQ Wallpapers. ‘Wo’ is an element? Who will tell IUPAC and/or californium?

This is perilously close to being a ‘Periodic Table of…” that I am NOT documenting here, but the symbol abuse just compels me to include it.

Thanks to Brandon Boyd for calling out Veritasium – they purport to know better! ‘An element of truth’? Nope, all lies!

It was only a matter of time before this old chestnut turned up, and we didn’t have to wait too long thanks to Kaplan’s MCAT prep Twitter feed. Oh how I have hated this for many years.

@altotus (and his dad) keep me abreast of goings on in Florida at Toasted restaurant in Winter Park. Another one that’s close to ‘The Periodic Table of…‘ (that I am trying to avoid documenting here), this ones goes in for symbol abuse. Hope that their sandwiches are better than their respect for the periodic table!

Horror of horrors, now the American Chemistry Council gets in on the act. When will the madness end?

You may remember this from a relatively recent Dow TV ad campaign. Thanks to @chris_sy for the reminder.

Yes you can buy this Chinese food mug at zazzle.com. Please have some respect, and don’t. Although I suppose eating fried rice is better than consuming Francium!

Again, if I am honest, if the choice is a bowl full of curium or a bowl full of chow mein, I’m running with the MSG option.

You may be aware of the book Science Ink written by Carl Zimmer (another book that I wish I had thought of writing), that catalogs science based tattoos. I’m not sure if this one is in that book, but the symbol abuse makes me cringe almost as much as the needle would! BTW – that bottom molecule looks like it was supposed to be dopamine, but I think they left out a double bond.

Is it the 21st Century edubabble BS that annoys me more, or is it the symbol abuse? A tie – it’s dumb squared. Thanks to @dprindle for the alert.

Oh look, non-science hijacks REAL science – a common them in the bizarre world of education. Thanks to @TheOtherDrX for vigilance in the education BS world.

Like ME, Bill Nye abuses the table – but somehow, I feel that people like him and I should get a pass! Thanks to the @TheOtherDrX once more.

More nonsense from Breaking Bad – I bet there’s a LOT more to come from that particular source! Thanks to Scott Engler for this one.

Yes it IS a ‘Periodic Table Of…‘ (that I am trying to avoid documenting), but again, it really has to go in for symbol abuse. Thank you, Penney.

Is this abuse? Not sure, but for now Chrissy Bramer’s ‘LuNCH’ box goes into the abuse project. Maybe one to review?

Symbol abuse of an extreme magnitude qualifies ‘The Periodic Table of Tour de France winners‘. On a Sixpence starts the abuse and hardly knows when to stop and I’ll simply document three of them here. To be fair, some of the prints really are rather attractive.

More cycling abuse, this time from the Italian version of ‘Le Tour’ for the second, On a Sixpence entry.

And finally the third version of bicycling madness that summarizes the Spanish race.

Southeast Michigan Chemistry Teachers Organization make up an element! Mmmmmm…..

More strange mugs. Not sure where this leaves hydrogen and helium, or even Ekaaluminium!

Although Empedocles might approve, I’m not sure where he’s getting his atomic weights.

I thought that the elemental symbol for water was ▽, but it looks like IUPAC have updated things! If you’re not familiar with the movie The Fifth Element and the character Leeloo (like me), then the pun is lost on you. I am now educated in such matters. Thanks, Dan!

Less about abuse, and more about taking some liberties. Scandium = Drexel University’s ‘Science Center’ at 34th and Market in Philadelphia.

According to the Urban Dictionary, nintendium is “The hardest, most durable material known to mankind, discovered by nintendo for usage in their console, the Nintendo Entertainment System”. Other sources tell us it is the 133rd element and has the symbol Nn! Feel free to wholly ignore both. Thanks to @CCanfield100 for the spot.

Another one to file under the heading of, ‘they should know better’, Trinity College of Arts & Science at Duke do the dirty on Na and Se, and create two, new ‘elements’. Thanks to @cjt217 for the spot.

ATOMAS by Max Gittel undoes some otherwise interesting work with a nasty symbol for Br. (I still don’t ‘get’ the game BTW).

It’s national ‘Donut’ day today (June 5th) so I suggest celebrating by never doing this. Thanks @overheardinchem.

Well, this stinks! Thanks to @bhgross144 for this huge pile of nothing but abuse!

Got to be honest, I hate this. Everything is benzene and the groups are destroyed. Abuse of the highest order!

So, sulfites and other ‘chemicals’ were worrying you in your wine? How about a few pieces of cesium? Charles Smith Wines offer a group 1 metal as an addition to your approachable, Cab Sav!

Not content with Cs, Charles Smith goes on to offer your rhenium and a couple of new elements.

I’m going to categorize this as ‘positional abuse’ @CHI_Healthtech. I guess that’s ‘Life Scientists’ for ya!

No @MaddChemistry, you may not abuse symbols and names in this manner, not even in the name of #GaGa.

@scburdet points out this aggravating Valentine’s Day greeting card. Aggravating? Yes, because it was all going well until ‘M’ (well that and whatever the 2, 3, 5 and 2 are doing there).

Bodybuilding.com uses the old trick of invoking the periodic table (or at least the appearance of it) in order to give more scientific credence to a product. Thanks to @Meachteach for the spot.

“Fusion of elements”? It’s a transfermium pen? As @fluorogrol points out, this really is “A perfect storm of element abuse and marketing bullshit”. Brought to us by @scburdet.

More hot sauce abuse spotted by @scburdet once more. Surely the Ca would be the exact opposite of hot sauce, right? Right?

A Jackie Robinson connection on the @nightlyshow? Asks, @scburdet. Either way, where the hell did molybdenum go?

Err…actually no, Barracuda, you’ve got all the WRONG elements. Thanks to @overheardinchem for the spot at Reno-Tahoe International Airport.

Honestly Sweet Science Ice Cream, this is neither ‘sweet’ or ‘science’.

Ed. ‘guru’, Thomas C Murray abuses technetium. Or is it carbon, or are there new elements? Nope.

Wehrd science should know better!

No, no, no Chemistry Arena, seasons are not elements!

Muscle Elements attempts to connect ‘science’ to their product through the name and the symbolism – presumably.

This IS indeed very ‘naughty’, as in, ‘naughty not being an element’. Na. Thanks to @vancew for the spot

Here’s more Yogurt nonsense, this time from Yogurt Lab in Mn. Thanks to @MeachTeach for the spot.

Sequence and duplication abuse from Dow (again) and Accenture. Tut, tut. Thanks to @chembones for the spot.

Random alphabet appears on this T-Shirt apparently listed related Roller Derby penalties – yeah, means nothing to me, either.

Nathan from MA puts abuse front and center on his chest at ChemEd 2015.

Scott Engler goes out for pizza at Pie Five and is extremely disappointed. No word on how the pizza was, though.

Yeah Nerd Shirts, there is no Ninja element – but thanks, anyway.

Yeah, not in love with this for a multitude of reasons. but I think it fits ‘sequence abuse’ quite nicely. Just don’t wear this in class. OK?

Heavy Metals? Sequence abuse, or is iron really a heavy metal? I think not. Either way, I would say this is abuse for Bd Idea T-shirts. Thanks to Roy Lovell for the spot.

Bob Worley sees a little more sequence abuse, and he suggests that some people might be bothered by other aspects of this – I’m not.

The Durham Science Cafe adds a few spurious elements to the periodic table. Di and Le make their debut!

Tide re-christen cobalt and mercury in the interest of flogging washing powder. Thanks to Dr. Michelle for the spot.

Look, you really can’t have any kind of ‘periodic table’ prior to the mid-late 19th century. Thanks to @scburdet for pointing out the folly of Doug Savage’s chickens!

Sorry, but there really is no Venn diagram relationship between state abbreviations in uppercase letters and the element symbols. Pet peeve @Andrew_Taylor

The people at @UnQuarkedWine go all out in the abuse of symbols and the table as a whole. Grrr…

And on and on. Double Grrr…

Apparently, hydrogen peroxide has the formula ‘HP’ in Californian supermarkets. Thanks to @ramusallam for the spot.

Communication is a ‘science’? Wha….?? Thanks to Simon Lancaster for pointing out the error of @AlexanderAiken‘s ways.

Symbol abuse is rife, but this is a ‘periodic table’??? It looks like they just gave up and said that just ANY set of columns and rows counts. A miserable, miserable effort by @dannysullivan.

The periodic table of ‘growth hacking’? Yeah right, only one of those things is actually real. Please stop this BS @rutgerbuijzen.

Again, I’m trying to avoid the documentation of ‘The Periodic Table Of..’ as a rule here, but the symbol abuse makes this work for me.

The Northern Illinois Science Educators take nickel and selenium to new places.

Ben Dieckman gives me the heads up on some symbol abuse, horror of horrors, in the name of ‘science’! BTW, what’s the ‘e’ element?

A seasonal, sequence abuse. Blame Seinfeld, I do.

More sequence abuse, even if it is in a good cause, this time from @AgilentChem. Not sure that I want those elements in my wine!

You know something is up, when FOUR different people alert you to abuse, AND each of those people make a comment regarding my potential supreme dislike for edubabble paired with Periodic Table Abuse! It’s not that I dislike Ed. Tech per se, in fact on the contrary, it’s that I despise the use of it as a Trojan horse to introduce edubabble BS and flawed, pedagogical concepts. How I HATE this double-abuse! Thanks for tying to kill me, @cgchemK, @S_J_Lancaster, @altotus and @Media_Barber!

Thanks to Phoebe Liu for giving me skinny on both symbol and table abuse inspired by Minecraft.

Thanks to @scburdet for keeping the abuse coming. This time @is_chris finds a NASTY coffee-cup. I wouldn’t trust the contents!

More from the ever vigilant @scburdet, and more from the kitchen. This time he’s keeping tabs on @jeremymberg and his silly Copper/Cumin nonsense.

Apologies but I forget who alerted me to this non-element nonsense. Fittingly, I have really no idea what this is about either (other than the fact that the abuse is rampant). I know that it’s from The Atlantic in 1999, but I really don’t understand it at all.

Yeah Cougar Science Camp, there’s way too much math, physics and equations for a periodic table here. Sorry, me no like. Thanks to @pchemstud.

Apparently there is an ‘official Minecraft periodic table’. Errr, no there isn’t! Thanks to Loyce Bergin for passing this little abuser on to me.

Confused? Yeah, I’ll say you are.

No Brewing Technologies, there is no element called stainlessium and if there were, it would probably be called chromium!

C’mon IU, let’s not abuse the very lifeblood of what we do! Shouldn’t abuse of average atomic mass be accompanied by abuse of atomic number?

Thanks to @ MonashMONster for this tasty but blatant, full on abuse.

My pencils would be unhappy were they to be housed in this.

Old, old, old abuse this time re-vamped (from ‘element of surprise’), by Chegg. Yawn.

Just like STEAM is a fictitious, made-up marketing tool, appropriately so is BK consulting’s Logo. Perfect synergy as they would say in the consulting world!

Just like IU, BU does the dirty.

Those pictures had better be those missing elements! It doesn’t look like they are to me.

Even though I am generally trying to avoid ‘The Periodic Table of..‘ misrepresentations, the symbols alone on this are giving me heartburn. Thanks Sherry Lynn McGregor.

Oh God, now the Canadians are at it. Thanks again to Sherry Lynn McGregor.

Now this I REALLY dislike. It couples Periodic Table abuse with one of my own pet hates, the sickly sweet, Utopian presentation of the job of teaching. YUCK! And what’s going on with #3, anyway??

Any idea what 94 and 63 have to do with anything? Pu, Eu?

I have to admit that @onasixpence does some beautiful work, and this is of particular interest to me, but nonetheless, more abuse it is!

Brandon Boyd brings to my attention some symbol abuse.

There’s so much wrong with this, it’s tricky to know where to start to be honest. Thanks to Matt for the spot.

Thanks to Ivan Aprahamian (and others) for spotting this BS marketing from the people at Cole Haan.

An old joke. I can just about take the Na abuse, but not the Batman nonsense. A little too ‘Big Bang Theory’ for my liking. Not a superhero/comic fan, and this doesn’t lighten my mood.

It’s difficult to know where to start here, but suffice to say, this is a real humdinger! Thanks to @cjt217 for the heads up.

Wrong, wrong and wrong, Dr. Pepper. Vanadium in my soda?

I’m not a huge fan of John Oliver (I just don’t find him particularly funny), and I warm to Mr. Lochte even less, so when the swimmer continues to get press for being a moron and Oliver abuses the table, I’m not happy. Thanks to Christian Canfield for the heads-up.

Yikes, the ‘flavor lab’ might be best avoided! Shout out to Ty Walling for the spot.

Old problem, slightly new context, still annoying.

Time Out butchers the Periodic Table in just about as many ways as I can imagine. Where does one start? I can’t even begin to fathom the insane lack of logic here. Thanks to @BenningtonChem for highlighting the misery.

A whole OTHER set of essential elements? Thanks to @paulcoxon for the insight!

Old Navy will put ANYTHING on a T-shirt, including halogen abuse! Thanks to @hawkwing12 for the fashion faux pas.

Uncommongoods.com produces a mixology set that certainly has its appeal, however, it’s just plain wrong.

Whilst I approve of the things these stand for, I strong disapprove of the abuse.



Christian Canfield alerts me to symbol abuse. Is that the chemical formula for coconut? 😉

