The Modern Triumph of the Periodic Table of Elements
bloomberg.com
bloomberg.com
The article also presents the number of elements in things as if that can show some kind of quantifiable change in a positive or negative way (for example, they call out the number of elements in a cell phone as having increased since the first cell phone).
I was hoping for something a bit more insightful about the design of the periodic table itself, whether about
1. Increasing order by atomic mass (and the ramifications thereof)
2. Arrangement of periods and the predictions we've been able to make/use
3. The groups of the table and the predictions we've been able to make/use, though I guess this is most common among the noble gases
4. Rare earth metals
And I'm sure there's a lot more I don't know -- every time I learn something about the periodic table, the more impressed I am by how orderly and patterned it is today despite having been initially designed (with gaps!) a century and a half ago.
The article could even have gone into how there are spoofs of the periodic table just because it's such a lasting, easily-understandable design.
Most spoofs of the PT are bad because they don't have any periodicity, wholly missing the point.
I suspect this happens because the PT is the most famous organized list in science, and it's structure (not a simple array!) is fascinating even to people who don't bother to understand what the structure means (logically, not to mention chemically).
If you are really into the "Periodic" and "Table" aspects, check out Theo Gray's Periodic Periodic Table Table posts ;-)
I gave up before I made it that far. So it is. I wonder if anyone put that in deliberately as a metaphor?