When Tracy Meadows was planning a day trip to Toledo, an unexpected attraction found its way to the top of her must-see list: Living Science: The Ever-Changing Periodic Table at The University of Toledo.
Meadows, a reference librarian who lives in Ontario, Ohio, had stumbled across the display on Tripadvisor. She’s not particularly science-minded, she said, but something about the community-curated display of items that represent nearly all the 118 known elements piqued her interest.
Dr. Kristin Kirschbaum, director of the UToledo Instrumentation Center, regularly meets and corresponds with visitors to the Ever-Changing Periodic Table.
And it didn’t disappoint, she said recently.
“I loved it,” Meadows said, recalling her visit back in 2022. “I took so many pictures of what people had contributed for all the elements. It was very cool.”
Wednesday is National Periodic Table Day, and UToledo’s Wolfe Hall owes its status as a quasi-tourist destination to a unique spin on the standard arrangement of chemical elements. Since its installation in 2016, the nearly floor-to-ceiling display has attracted visitors from Ontario, Ohio, to Sandusky, Michigan, and donors from as far as the West Coast and Ireland. And it daily catches the attention of students, faculty and staff who pass through Wolfe Hall.
Dr. Kristin Kirschbaum, director of the UToledo Instrumentation Center, said she believes it’s the only periodic table of its kind with community members who have ranged from schoolchildren to retirees taking up her invitation to show how the chemical elements relate to their lives.
In lead’s shadow box display is a corroded pipe recalling the water crisis in Flint, Michigan, for example. In chromium’s are mosaic tiles glazed with a green pigment created with chromic oxide.
“The Ever-Changing Periodic Table is a reminder that chemistry is relevant to us all,” said Kirschbaum, who is more familiar than most with contents of the display and the personal stories behind them. She’s been involved in the project since the beginning, securing the grant to fund the project through UToledo’s Women & Philanthropy and now regularly corresponding and meeting with visitors like Meadows, who stopped by with friend and UToledo alumna, Gretchen Yonata.
“Chemistry should not have a negative connotation,” Kirschbaum said. “It can be a lot of fun.”
A corresponding website shares the stories of the contributed items, which in some cases better illustrate the impact of chemistry on people’s lives than the items themselves. Kirschbaum remembers well a heartwarming call from a widow in South Carolina whose granddaughter was about to begin her freshman year at UToledo in 2018. As a touching tribute to her late husband’s memory she decided to contribute his artificial knee, which was made of a cobalt-chromium alloy and played a crucial role in his quality of life. Today it is displayed in the shadow box for cobalt.
The element meitnerium is testament to the international reputation of the Ever-Changing Periodic Table. It’s represented by a stamp depicting Lise Meitner, the Austrian-Swedish physicist who contributed to the discovery of nuclear fission. The 1944 Nobel Prize in Chemistry went exclusively to her collaborator, but she later received some recognition for her significant contributions to nuclear chemistry with meitnerium, a man-made radioactive element that was named in her honor in 1997.
Since the 2016 installation of Living Science: The Ever-Changing Periodic Table in Wolfe Hall, the nearly floor-to-ceiling display has attracted visitors from as far as Ireland.
Billy Walsh sent the stamp depicting Meitner from Ireland. It’s surplus from his collection in support of a similar periodic table display at the University of Limerick, as are several other items that appear in UToledo’s display representing darmstadtium, fermium, hassium, livermorium, mendelevium and rutherfordium.
The Ever-Changing Periodic Table made an impression on Aaron Seifferlein and his family, who visited the display from Sandusky, Michigan, in 2018. Like Meadows and Yonata, they were already heading toward Toledo when they stumbled across a description of the periodic table display on Tripadvisor. It seemed a perfect detour, given their oldest son Sebastian’s burgeoning enthusiasm for science.
The Seifferleins recorded a video of the then-9-year-old singing the names of each element in front of the display and enjoyed a visit and a few additional lab demonstrations with Kirschbaum.
“It was above and beyond what I expected,” Aaron Seifferlein said. “It was a nice visit and a good first impression of the University.”
More than five years later, there are more items in the shadow boxes today than appear in the background of the family’s video. But there are still a few elements that need contributions – and not necessarily the obvious ones. Some radioactive elements like polonium are covered, for example, while relatively common ones like nitrogen are still awaiting a contributor.
And the whole display lives up to its ever-changing moniker.
Kirschbaum said she hasn’t had much occasion to completely swap items in and out of the shadow boxes, but she’s adjusted displays as years go by and new contributions come in.
Meadows became one of those contributors during her visit to UToledo. She decided to adopt lithium, and brought along a collection of items like button-cell batteries and a can of 7UP, whose formula she learned contained small quantities of naturally occurring lithium citrate until 1948.
“I made good use of our science databases at work,” Meadows said with a laugh.
She said she thinks the display has earned its spot on TripAdvisor. She’s contemplating another visit back herself, to see her lithium donations on display in person.
To make a contribution to the periodic table or schedule a visit, contact Kirschbaum at kristin.kirschbaum@utoledo.edu or 419.530.7847.
