Day 03: Custom Periodic Table

In your chemistry class this year you are going to focus primarily on the first 20 elements in the periodic table. So we're going to assemble a reference tool out of colored construction paper that you can use both as a study tool and to make your chemistry work easier.

We're going to follow the EDP to develop this tool. Here's a helpful graphic to remind you of the steps involved:

As you can see, the first step has to be defining the problem. A good engineering definition will include WHO needs WHAT and WHY they need it. It will also include requirements (by what standards will you know if you solved your problem) and constraints (how much time do you have, how many people can help you, what materials are available, and what tools or equipment can you use). So we're going to spend some time defining our problem properly.

Once that is done we can move on to researching those 20 elements as well as the various ways other people have already designed reference tables to display this information.

The third step is to brainstorm different ways this thing can be structured, with a goal of trying to come up with at least one idea that is new to us.