Dmitri Ivanovich Mendeleev was not the first to work on a scientific classification of the elements, but he was the most thorough, and it's his version of the table we're all familiar with today. Familiar, that is, until you see the cabinet unveiled last week at the Catholic University of Leuven (KUL). A monument to Mendeleev's plan, the cabinet measures 2 x 3 metres and contains a sample of every known element.
Well, almost every one. Things like lead were easy to come by, and for most elements there is a sample in pure form, a sample of the ore the element comes from and several objects made from it. In the case of lead: genuine American Civil War bullets and some letters from a printing press.
Samples of uranium and plutonium, though, were slightly more difficult to come by and aren't on the whole recommended for exposure to visitors to a university. Those sorts of elements are represented by illustrated materials.
The cabinet was created to mark not only the International Year of Chemistry but also the centenary of the Nobel Prize won by Marie Curie for her discovery of two more elements you won't see: polonium and radium, the latter of which killed her. It's on display in the entrance hall of the Department of Metallurgy and Applied Materials Engineering and will later move to the library on the Arenberg campus.
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