“Periodic Table Live!” is a notable new resource from the Chemical Education Digital Library (ChemEd DL). Students and teachers especially are invited to interact with the periodic table, chose an element of interest, and learn all sorts of interesting information about that element–from details of its discovery, to its industrial uses and other characteristics. Users also learn about different physical (ie. boiling point, melting point, hardness) and atomic properties (ie. ionization energies, electronegativity, atomic radius) of elements. You can see pictures, view videos of reactions, and play around with 3-dimensional crystal structure(s) of elements. An additional function of the periodic table is its ability to chart and sort. You can choose a certain property (or many properties) of a selection of elements, and see how they compare based on where the element is on the periodic table. Periodic Table Live! is useful way to teach students about periodic trends.

Periodic Table Live! features excellent information about the elements, but you can help make it even better. Each element description is also available from the ChemEd Collaborative, the ChemEd DL wiki at http://wiki.chemeddl.org/index.php/PTL:Elements as are the short chemist biographies at http://wiki.chemeddl.org/index.php/PTL:Chemists. We invite you to collaborate with us through use of the wiki to make Periodic Table Live! as good as it can be by sharing your expertise. Currently images of minerals of the elements are being added to the wiki. Why not join the ChemEdDL team in helping to create the best periodic table on the Web?