Dance Number

Fiona Theokritoff

Mendeleev spread it before us. His table of the elements,
another map of our world. On posters it’s multicoloured:
an illuminated dance floor for atomic numbers,
shuffled into a line-dance of groups and rows.

Element 1 Hydrogen, top left is gaseous and flirty:
an electron to spare, ready to pair
up with any partner, dance the electron boogie.
Develop the chemistry of water. Water of life.

Element 2 Helium sits way right, with those
whose dance-card electron shells are already filled.
Nothing to share except a noble sangfroid:
never react, never respond, never explain. Just glow.

The rest cha-cha-cha from left to right,
from volatility to stability. Weighed down
by increasing mass and number, they must be
jostled, irritated or heated to pair up,

won’t tango with just any element,
but find a dance partner with a matching spark.

The Science

In the early 1860s Dmitri Mendeleev, a young Russian chemist, came up with an idea that revolutionised our understanding of the structure of the physical world. He had the insight to create a table of all the known elements including their composition and properties. First, he used the atomic mass of each element (the number of protons and neutrons in the nucleus) to order all the known elements at the time. When he arranged this sequence into columns and rows he realised that elements in the columns had certain properties in common - for example, the left hand column contained sodium, lithium and potassium which are all solid at room temperature and oxidise rapidly (these days known as the Alkali metals). He called the columns groups, and the rows became periods. His 'periodic table' was published in 1869. He was sure that his table was incomplete, so left gaps which were filled as previously unknown elements were discovered or isolated. From his periodic table, Mendeleev could predict the atomic mass and properties of these new elements, and as chemistry developed into the twentieth century, the table paved the way for understanding the atomic and subatomic structure of the elements.

The Poet

Fiona Theokritoff lives in Nottinghamshire in the UK, and works as a tutor for a community education organisation. She completed her Creative Writing MA at Nottingham Trent University in 2019. Her work has appeared in Mslexia, The Interpreter’s House, Ink Sweat and Tears: also Under the Radar, Envoi and Raceme. As one half of Wine and Words she performs her work across Nottinghamshire at book festivals and other events. A long time ago, Fiona did a degree in ecology: these days she writes poems about scientific ideas and quite often, shoes.

Next poem: Electrons to Images by D'Arcy Little