[watch this video] The periodic table table (and fic libraries and carved books)
Theo Gray, element collector and many other things, constructed a table with a hand-carved wooden tile for every element in Mendeleev's periodic table. Each tile hides a sample of the element inside the table. It's a beautiful piece of work, and I love how it shows that there are real, physical, interesting things behind that perfectly boring grid full of letters I was presented with in high school and forgot as quickly as I could possibly manage. Maybe I'd have tried harder to take an interest in chemistry if the periodic table had been presented as this intricate ordering of actual materials that look and feel absolutely fascinating. Most of the video is Gray showing off his collection of element samples, and oh, I wish I was in that room right now and could touch all that stuff. (New thing learned today: tungsten is an incredibly heavy element, and one actual use of tungsten powder is sprinkling it on wax in dog's ears so the ears will lie flat.)
Theo Gray: the periodic table table (via Open Culture)
And of course a "periodic table table" is just a really cute idea. It makes me think of grabbing some old cabinets from the library and making a "fic archive archive" of printed and bound editions of all the fic in my bookmarks. There would be typewritten cross-referenced index cards in catalog cabinets, and there would be Dewey decimal, and the classification numbers would be stuck to the jackets with tape that's peeling off after many loving readings. Everything would smell of paper, and I would stroll through the stacks and caress the spines of my old favorite Snarry epics and be the the most well-content woman in the world. (I thought for a minute about what a collaborative print archive/library of all the fic ever written might be like, but it would never get past the planning stage. We'd never agree on whether mpreg belongs under 305-Social groups, 618-Gynaecology, or 299-Other religions.)
Speaking of books and gorgeous things: these books carved with surgical tools are ingenious and stunning. (via
cofax7)
This entry was originally posted at http://fanficforensics.dreamwidth.org/44430.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
Theo Gray: the periodic table table (via Open Culture)
Click to viewAnd of course a "periodic table table" is just a really cute idea. It makes me think of grabbing some old cabinets from the library and making a "fic archive archive" of printed and bound editions of all the fic in my bookmarks. There would be typewritten cross-referenced index cards in catalog cabinets, and there would be Dewey decimal, and the classification numbers would be stuck to the jackets with tape that's peeling off after many loving readings. Everything would smell of paper, and I would stroll through the stacks and caress the spines of my old favorite Snarry epics and be the the most well-content woman in the world. (I thought for a minute about what a collaborative print archive/library of all the fic ever written might be like, but it would never get past the planning stage. We'd never agree on whether mpreg belongs under 305-Social groups, 618-Gynaecology, or 299-Other religions.)
Speaking of books and gorgeous things: these books carved with surgical tools are ingenious and stunning. (via
cofax7)
This entry was originally posted at http://fanficforensics.dreamwidth.org/44430.html. Please comment there using OpenID.