EPILOGUE SCIENCE, SCIENCE! EPILOGUE SCIENCE, SCIENCE! The Intriguing Yet BeautifulPeriodic Table of the ElementsA large part of what drew me to the natural sciences was the periodic table of the elements. I’ve loved shonen manga (manga whose main target is school-aged boys) ever since I was a child. My favorite was Fullmetal Alchemist. I loved it and read it over and over. The story is a fantasy set in world with a magical kind of alchemy. The main characters and their antagonists in battle use this alchemy to transform and convert matter into weapons and armor. These ingenious efforts were often accompanied by some discussion of the elements—how the human body is com-posed of carbon, hydrogen, and other el-ements and the proportions each of these elements accounted for. And these were the names of real elements. Back then, I didn’t understand the boundaries between the real and the fictional parts very well, and I thought the mysterious elements were cool and fascinating.In my science classes at junior high, I learned that all the matter in the world is composed of atoms. That’s when I was introduced to the periodic table of the ele-ments. Everything in the world was made up of the atoms arranged in that table of the elements! Memorization was never one of my strengths, but under the spell of the manga, curiosity supported my ef-fort to memorize the table. In high school chemistry classes, I learned more about the commonalities and relationships of chem-ical properties for each group (column) or period (row) of elements in the table. If you have the position of an element in the table in your head, you intuitively know the general mechanism of its chemical re-actions. I became increasingly intrigued by the strict organization of the elements in the table—those more than 100 elements so neatly arranged in a single table. I decid-ed I wanted to learn more about the natu-ral sciences in college and chose physics as my major. One day, in a quantum mechan-ics class at the university, we were given an assignment to solve the Schrödinger equation in three dimensions for the hy-drogen atom. This was a challenging as-signment. I spent the entire night working on the problem. By the time I’d solved the problem, it was morning. I was amazed to discover I’d lled dozens of pages of an A4 writing pad with mathematical formulas, characters, and diagrams!In this equation, we have the integers n, l, and m, which are called quantum numbers. The n represents the shell (K, L, or M shell); l represents orbital angular mo-mentum; and m represents the magnetic quantum number. Using these integers as parameters, by examining the energy levels in a multi-electron system, we can understand the regularity of the electron conguration and orbitals of the elements. Based on this regularity, we can also un-derstand the principles underlying the commonalities and relationships of chem-ical properties and the clear orderliness of the periodic table of the elements. I looked once again at the periodic table shortly after that and thought, “Wow, this is so beautiful!”* *The Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleev is generally regarded to have discovered the periodic law in 1869. But I think the pe-riodic table was the culmination of knowl-edge accumulated not just by Mendeleev, but by many other geniuses, including the individuals known as alchemists in antiqui-ty, philosophers, and modern scientists.Most of my graduate school years were spent in a condensed matter physics lab. I studied the mechanism of unique superconducting materials in which mag-netism and superconductivity coexist and compete. I produced ceramics that behave as superconductors by mixing and firing high-purity reagents. However, I had to cut out samples and repeat the experiments dozens of times before I could produce one with the desired properties. During my trial-and-error efforts, the periodic table of the elements served as my compass and guided me in the right direction. For exam-ple, if I was trying to combine an element with a low boiling point with one with a high melting point, I knew I couldn’t set the temperature too high for the reaction, since the element with the low boiling point would volatize rst; and by the time the element with the high melting point was ready to react, it would have nothing to react with. I had to prepare a compound or alloy of the element with the low boiling point to temporarily suppress its volatility. Then, I would determine the recipe that would let me obtain the desired compo-sitional ratio by allowing that compound or alloy to react with the element with the higher melting point. The periodic table allowed me to consider this approach, and I saw it as my compass for material design.* *I’ve recently given some thought to the word period in the periodic table of the el-ements. Sound is also a physical phenom-enon that demonstrates periodicity. And the kanji character for sound, read as on in Japanese, is part of our company’s name. I’ve come to realize that periodicity is a uni-versal principle in nature. We nd various periodic cycles in nature. These cycles af-fect our activities as humans. Studying the periodicity of things and organizing them systematically, as in the periodic table, may help us nd a compass for our future.No. 005The Periodic Table of the Elements as a Culmination of KnowledgeSolution to the Schrödinger equation (for the hydrogen atom)The periodic table of the elementsRion is supported by many science-loving and math-loving staff members. In this series, our science-minded staff members write about their enthusiasm for their respective fields of interest. Part 5 offers a presentation about the periodic table of the elements.Because We’re Science and Math LoversColumn by Rion’s staff on their obsession with scienceInterview and article by Kana YokotaShinichi IshikawaS&V Sensor Development Group, R&D Depart ment, Technical Development Center. Joined Rion in 2012. He has been active in research on acoustics and vibra-tion in the development of transducers. His achievements include the develop-ment of the earphones used in cordless audiometers.20
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