Oct 28, 2005

No Periodic Tables at CERN

Posted in Chemistry at 3:56 pm by David Bradley -- Click to comment

According to the Scientific American Blog, CERN’s Andre Martin has worked out that there is no need for any of us to suffer wobbly tables ever again, apparently the periodic motion of a four-legged table standing on an uneven surface can be corrected by simple trial and error without resorting to folded up chunks of lab-book paper or beermats. All you have to do is rotate the table until you hit an orientation in which the table no longer wobbles.

Brilliant!

Such fundamental science is surely why CERN exists, never mind particle physics and the Web.

However, one aspect of periodic tables that Martin doesn’t address in his thesis is how to arrange the seating so that noone ends up with a chair leg jammed up against their knee. Maybe he should seek funding for that important piece of research…

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