University of Wisconsin-Madison Materials Research Science and Engineering Center Interdisciplinary Education Group

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LEGO^® Periodic Table

Click on a brick!

by Dean Campbell, Phuong Nguyen, Kylee Korte, Joel Kouakou, and KaReisha Robinson

Each LEGO^® brick in the following periodic table links to building instructions for a model of the solid state structure for that element. (We are still looking for some of the structures, so some of the the links are not yet complete. Let us know if you have information that can help us.)

The colors of the bricks represent different types of elements:

• green = main group metals
• red = metalloids
• yellow = transition metals
• white = nonmetals

The small blue bricks are the number of valence electrons for the neutral form of that element (main group elements only).

References

• Ellis, A. B.; Geselbracht, M. J.; Jonson, B. J.; Lisensky, G. C.; Robinson, W.R. Teaching General Chemistry: A Material Science Companion, Oxford University Press 1993.
• WebElements, the Periodic Table on the www: http://www.webelements.com/webelements/scholar/index.html
• Center for Computational Material Science: http://cst-www.nrl.navy.mil/

 

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Copyright © 2008 The Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System.

This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under DMR Grant No. 0520527
Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.