Periodic Table

By Bob Gariano

The J. Crew store in Lake Forest’s Market Square has a new window display that is based on the periodic table of the elements. In this chart, certain elements have been replaced with symbols that denote some upcoming fashion activity or piece of merchandise which will be offered for the fast approaching autumn season. There is Ch for chambray and Sb for schoolboy blazer. The scientific background is meant to imply scholarship and to get customers thinking about buying back to school clothing. It is a creative, if oblique, approach to merchandising.

The merchandising and marketing experts at any successful consumer goods retailer must be able to predict the future. The window designers and buyers at J. Crew headquarters were probably working on this display and sourcing clothing to back it up several months ago. As we were preparing late this spring for the dog days of summer, J. Crew designers were developing a theme based on the periodic table of the elements that would sell sweaters and corduroys for the autumn season. Because the supply chain for clothing manufacturers is two or three months long, buyers have to commit to what they predict will sell in the next season. Once the goods are made and on the water, there is little ability to change merchandising strategies.

Mendeleev’s Table

I think that Dmitri Mendeleev would have enjoyed seeing the J. Crew ladies at the store on Market Square up on their step ladders decorating the windows with his invention. Mendeleev first published the periodic table of the elements in 1869 when he recognized some particularly distinctive properties of the 65 elements that were known at that time.

Like most great inventions, the table is as simple as it is useful. Mendeleev arranged the elements in a grid where each element in a horizontal row has a higher atomic weight than the one on the left. Vertically, he grouped the elements by their apparent properties. The horizontal rows are called periods and the vertical columns are called groups. The table became fundamental to our modern science of chemistry.

Mendeleev himself was quite a fortune teller and he used his new periodic table to accurately see over the horizon. He noticed that there were gaps in his table and he predicted that there were elements which would be discovered in the future to fill these gaps. In particular, he predicted the existence of germanium, which later filled the gap between silicon and tin, as well as gallium and scandium. He did not know their names or where they occurred, but he accurately used his table to describe their properties.

Forty years after Mendeleev published his table, Henry Moseley, who worked with Rutherford, showed that the atomic number, or electric charge, of an element’s atoms was more fundamental than the atomic weight in determining the properties and behavior of an element. The Rutherford-Bohr model defines the relationship of elements by the configuration of an atom’s electrons and this largely determines the reactivity and properties of each one. The electron configuration in the atom’s outer most shell is what really positions each element in its own vertical group. The elements still all line up like satraps in a medieval parade, each different, but each part of a larger organization.

Science Fiction

Group 14 is called the metalloids and it is my favorite. At the top of this group is the element carbon, the basic building block for all organic compounds, the fundamental materials of life itself. The abundant and useful element, silicon, lies immediately under carbon in the table. Like all the other members of Group 14, these two elements have four electrons in their outer shells and their properties are similar. This has given rise to the idea, advanced by a number of science fiction writers, that there may be life forms on other planets based on silicon, rather than carbon. This is probably a long shot idea.

Carbon is a compelling building block for huge diversity of organic chemicals, from bacterial DNA to wool fibers to aviation fuel. Carbon’s bonding versatility allows it to join with a large number of other elements and to form long molecules in chains, sometimes thousands of atoms in length. Carbon is also versatile and can comfortably be the backbone in molecules that are linear, ring shaped, double bonded, or multiples of these. All of this means that there are millions of organic, carbon based molecules.

Silicon Rubber

Silicon is not such a versatile utility player. Many complex compounds of silicon are less stable than similar compounds with a carbon back bone. In addition, silicon does not have carbon’s ability to orient itself spatially within a compound to produce chirality or handedness. Organic compounds made from carbon can be right or left handed, but very few silicon based molecules have handedness at all. Life forms demand an incredible level of specificity from their compounds and seemingly identical carbon compounds with inverted handedness have remarkably different properties.

Even though there may not be life forms based on silicon, synthetic polymers based on silicon are big business. The rubbery interlayer that prevents automotive wind screens from fracturing in a crash is a silicon polymer. Its crystal clarity and strong adhesion to the glass outer layers would be difficult properties to achieve with carbon based materials. Other familiar silicon polymers include the room temperature vulcanization sealants used as a flexible seal around bath tubs and the energy absorbing silicon rubber used as an interlayer in bullet proof glass. Medical products often make use of the properties of silicon based polymers.

A recent innovation is the silicon rubber used in some new flexible cookware. Silicon rubber is heat resistant, flexible, non-reactive, and inherently resistant to the stickiness of cooked foods. Flexible silicon rubber makes a perfect material for muffin trays or bundt cake pans. Chemists have developed useful synthetic materials based on silicon, taking up where nature left off.

I hope that the ladies at the J. Crew store handle the periodic chart gently when they take it down in a few weeks. I suggest that they put it safely into storage and not simply consign it to the dumpster like previous more frivolous displays.  The new display that takes its place will probably have something to do with parkas and snow hats. Chambray might be out and faux fur might be in. In spite of the changing seasons, we should see the periodic table as another indication of the grander designs that nature has laid out, natural designs and patterns that transcend seasonal fashions and the fleeting designs of mankind.

Bob Gariano is President of RGA, an executive search firm that recruits senior executives and board members for public and private companies. Bob can be reached at rgariano@robertgariano.com