This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Flato. This month marks a big anniversary for chemistry,

150 years since Dmitri Mendelayev proposed the design of the periodic table. He'll probably

be seeing all sorts of chemical celebrations this month and this year, and we didn't want to miss

the party. Mendelayev's table has influenced people far beyond those high school

chemistry textbooks. For instance, when we spoke with neurologist Oliver Sacks over the years,

would you have guessed that he'd have favorite metals? Well, I think this partly goes back to my

uncle tungsten, my uncle who made filaments from tungsten and himself loved the density of

tungsten and its refractoryness and like him my favorite metals are all very dense and have

a very high melting point and they're also very noble. They're not attacked by acids or alkalis.

And I dream about them quite a lot. My favorite metals come between 72 and 78, between

half-neem and platinum. In this podcast extra, we're opening up the Science Friday Valtz to bring you two tales

from the periodic table.

First, a story of element creation.

We take you back to 2004, and the conversation with Joshua Patton, a nuclear chemist

at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

Patton and colleagues had just published a report

describing how a collaboration of scientists in the U.S. and Russia had created two never-before-seen

elements, elements 113 and 115. The periodic table of the elements is that chart that's hanging

in your classroom. Of course, you've got one with you right now.

Pull it out.

Take a look at that periodic table. Of course, you carry one with you all the time, don't you? If you look at it carefully, you'll notice the gaps. There are spaces. Spaces in the table left there for elements that have not yet been discovered or created. But now a team of scientists from Russia and California

announced this week that it's done just there. had been discovered or created. But now a team of scientists from Russia and California

...