Periodic Table of Elements

[cpt_traemel]

I'm not sure if anyone remembers the old Star Trek Medical Reference Manual put out years ago by Ballantine books. I created an Excel file of the periodic table in it for my FASA game. Recently I upgraded the table to take into account the discoveries of new elements, and mentions of elements from the series. I added three new energy levels to take into account 3 centuries of advancement. Some of the elements have appeared only in my game of that of my friends.

Here it is for your viewing pleasure. Please let me know if you have any suggestions on how to make it better, or if I missed any elements mentioned in Star Trek. I'm working on a newer "Trekified" version and will post that when I'm finished.

Captain Traemel

U.S.S Vindicator

Fate appears as vindicator, leveling the high, lifting the low, requiring justice in man, and always striking soon or late when justice is not done. What is useful will last, what is hurtful will sink. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

[JonA]

What application should we be unzipping the file and viewing it in?

[Lt Cmdr Matt]

.xls is Microsoft Excel file. If you do not have Microsoft, or if you use Linux , then I recommend downloading Open Office. It can be used with Windows, Mac, and Linux, and can open the popular Microsoft files.

[JonA]

I have Excel. But when I try and save the attachment and open it I get told it's in an invalid format for Excel to display.

[cpt_traemel]

My apologies. It's a zipped file. For some reason, when I uploaded it, the extension was not saved. Just use Winzip or another program to unzip the file. When you open the archive, you'll see that it's an Excel file.

Captain Traemel

U.S.S. Vindicator

“Fate appears as vindicator, leveling the high, lifting the low, requiring justice in man, and always striking soon or late when justice is not done. What is useful will last, what is hurtful will sink." -Ralph Waldo Emerson

[Dr. Jonas Bashir]

Neat. Really, neat. Being a Chemistry student (I'm going for an engineer diplomma) this is the first time I see soemone bringing the subject of Chemistry in Star Trek up.

A couple of things to mention, though. There are some elements which have been labeled as such, but are actually alloys. Some are allotropes of other elements (like dillithium). But it's very nice overall to consider the corbomite, pergium and dikironium as heavy elements.

[cpt_traemel]

Dr. Bashir. I thought about dilithium being an allotrope of lithium, but I decided that it would not make sense. According to a lot of the things I've read, dilithium in it's natural state is a crystalline substance that extends into the 4th dimension. It seems to me that would be a little bit more than a simple change in molecular structure. It also didn't really seem like it would be based on a simple metal element. Now trilithium I think IS an allotrope of dilithium.

Personal preference, I guess. Feel free to let me know of any changes you think I should make to enhance the "realism" of the table. It's been a while since I've had Chemistry, so I welcome the input.

[ComaBoy]

Originally posted by cpt_traemel
[B]My apologies. It's a zipped file. For some reason, when I uploaded it, the extension was not saved. Just use Winzip or another program to unzip the file. When you open the archive, you'll see that it's an Excel file.

Captain Traemel

Sorry Cap'n, but even using WinZip I can't recover the file; the archive appears blank.

[cpt_traemel]

I'm not sure why it's not working right now. I was able to download it a couple days ago with no issues. It appears to be saving it as an unknown file type titled "attachment." If anyone knows what I could possibly be doing wrong I'd appreciate a hint. It seems pretty intuitive - browse to the file location and save the message.

But back to your issue. I was able to open the file after renaming it with a .zip extension. I hate for you to have to go through this, but until I can get this fixed it's probably the only way.

[ComaBoy]

The file comes through with the .zip intact but when I go to unzip it, I'm told there is an 824 bytes error and do I want to continue. I hit yes or ok or whatever and then I get a fail message. Very frustrating. . .

[Balok]

Nice chart (I had no trouble opening it through Mozilla).

A couple of comments:

Corbomite is probably not a real element. In "The Corbomite Maneuver", Kirk described a "corbomite element and device" to Balok. The idea was that if Balok tried to destroy the Enterprise, his own destruction would result. In fact, the Enterprise possessed no such technology. Kirk referred to it again in "The Deadly Years". He dispatched a message to Starfleet in a code known to be compromised, so that the Romulans would intercept it. The message refered to a "corbomite self-destruct device" and advised Starfleet of an estimated zone of destruction. Its purpose was to trick the Romulans into withdrawing so that the Enterprise could escape the neutral zone. This episode does not really give us proof one way or another, but the self-destruct system has been refered to in other episodes (including "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield") without mention of corbomite.

I don't see "celebium" in the list (although I do see "celbrium"). Celebium is a radioactive material, probably an element, that was mentioned in "Turnabout Intruder"; the TOS episode in which Janice Lester switched minds with Kirk using ancient technology. The research staff had been sent where "the celebium shielding is weak". There's certainly no reason to infer that celebium is an element, but it's name (with the classic ium ending) suggests it.

Ketracell may or may not be an element; I'm assuming you're referring here to the substance without which the Jem'Hadar die. You could certainly assume that the Jem'Hadar had been engineered to require -- and be capable of assimilating -- high weight radioactive elements to exist, but to me it seems more likely that "ketracel white" is an organic compound.

Names like "unununium" are placeholders, used until the element is assigned a "real" name. The name means, literally, "one one one" ium, because it refers to the element with the atomic weight 111. Ununnilium, in fact, has been named; element 110 is named "Darmstadtium" after the German city where it was first sythesized.

Neutronium is an actual scientific term for collapsed matter; that is, matter that does not contain electrons or protons, only neutrons. There is no such thing as a neutronium "atom", so the concept of an atomic number would not apply.

Sorry for the long-winded commentary, but, hey, you *did* ask for comments...

[ComaBoy]

I fiddled with IE and WinZip and got it to work.

[cpt_traemel]

Fesarius,

No prob. I welcome the commentary. If I didn’t want input, I would have kept the chart strictly on my hard drive.

I agree that there was never any proof one way or another that corbomite existed. Except for the fact that it somehow got the Romulan’s attention. I’ve never really thought of the Romulans as particularly gullible, so I figured that corbomite probably existed, but not in the form that Captain Kirk claimed. His bluff was the device, not the substance it was built from.

As for Ketracell, in all honesty, I was writing down every reference to any substance I had ever heard in Star Trek and putting it on the chart. It’s in constant evolution, and I never really intended it to go beyond my personal use. If you can suggest something else to put there, please do. I could always make up a name, but I thought it would be cool to use stuff actually from ST. When I was watching DS9 (and I stopped after the Dominion War), there was never a good explanation of what Ketracell white was. It seemed to me that it was entirely possible that it was a substance made by processing a particular element.

And then there’s the neutronium. Yes, there’s no atomic number, but isn’t it possible that in the 24th century, the Periodic Table evolved to a point that it was no longer based strictly around an atomic number? The Doomsday machine was made out of neutronium, indicating that it can somehow be shaped and used to create a device. There is so little we know about it, that I felt the possibility was enough to merit its inclusion on this chart. That’s why I stuck it at the last part of the table.

Take celbrium and except that it was probably a typo. The element there was supposed to be celebium.

I’ll be posting a more updated version after I get some more input from anyone willing to give it, and I’ll be happy to consider names for 111-112. The reason I never named 111-112 is because I figured they’d get their own factual names and I could update it then.

Comaboy, I'm glad you got the chart to unzip. Let me know what you think.

[ComaBoy]

Very good overall. Here are a few comments:

I think DS9 made it sound as if 'the White' was the Jem'Hadar replacement for food, so I think it is more likely some kind of quasi-organic substance manufactured in a lab. (Liquid powerbar anyone?)

Ketracel is (erroneously, to me) described as a 'narcotic' in ST:Insurrection so it depends on your definition of 'canon'.

The 3rd season TNG episode 'Hollow Pursuits' mentions several substances ending in '-ium'; Invidium (sp?) being one of them. (I just watched it the other day, so if you have the tapes or DVDs, check in the last act of the show).

Neutronium is used to describe highly compressed matter; it relates to the state of the neutrons in the matter and not any particular element.

If you need more Latin prefixes to go in front of -ium, perhaps there's an English to Latin translator on the web which could help out. =)