A few days ago Søren shared an idea, “am going to write a story using all the letters on the periodic table.”
What in the world? After a summer of focusing on the garden—tilling earth, planting seeds, and harvesting fruit—the periodic table of the elements? But in the end, I realized that Søren’s idea has everything to do with the garden.
Last year I taught chemistry in my guild to a handful of high school students. We read The Periodic Kingdom, and “journeyed through the land of chemical elements” with P.W. Atkins. We watched the periodic table. Yes, watched. This was mad science in action. Chemists from the University of Nottingham have created a short video about each of the 118 elements. Stoichiometry, polarity, and biochemistry entered our discussion, and we concocted reactions in our little make-shift lab, extracted DNA from a variety of sources. But our explorations of the table itself was most amazing. And where was Søren? The little hovering bird was gathering seeds, of course.
So this morning, I woke up, hobbled sleepily into the kitchen to make a cup of tea, and saw our favorite coffee table acquisition from the chemistry class: The Elements: A Visual Exploration of Every Known Atom in the Universe, on the table along with a writer’s toolkit—pen, paper, dictionary.
Søren had an idea and was brave enough to engage the work, even during the last week of summer.
Thanks Leonardo.