We Love the Periodic Table

The periodic table is an invaluable tool for scientists across the planet -- but how does it work? In this episode, Allison and Robert explore the creation of the periodic table. Tune in to learn more about the history and structure of the periodic table.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Yeah, welcome to Stuff from the Science Lab from how
stuff works dot com. Hey, guys, welcome to the podcast.
This is Alison Leader Malcot, the science editor at how
stuff works dot com. And this is Robert Lamb, science

(00:21):
writer at how stuff works dot com. So, as you
guys know, as you very well know, we are a
science podcast, and as such, I really did think that
we had to have a podcast that covered the periodic table,
one of the awesomest pieces of paper to be put
out there. Yeah. Maybe it covers a whole wall in
your lab or in your room or at your office,
but it's it's really kind of astounding all the information

(00:43):
that is packed onto this one sheet of paper. Yeah,
it's one of those things that kind of grew to
appreciate because I was kind of bored by the periodic
table when I was in school. It was kind of
like one more thing you have to memorize, and well,
maybe not memorize. I don't know if we had a
memorize Did you memorize? I don't think it memorized. No, No,
you had to know because I'm remember one thing that
would come to mind, like people would be like, dude,
what have I got a tattoo of the periodic table

(01:05):
on my forearm. Well, there are periodic table tattoos all
sorts of merchandise. But but then it's but there was
kind of like this idea that it was like like
teachers wouldn't be able to like get after you for
cheating if it was tattooed scan out of it as
a method of cheating. Interesting. Yeah, I mean it really

(01:26):
speaks to our desire to organize the world. I think
it's one of the ultimate feats of organization that scientists
have pulled off. Yeah, it's pretty spectacular. I mean, these
are the building blocks of the universe. For the most part,
at least, the building blocks were all matter that we
regularly encounter. Let's not get into the whole dark matter thing, right,
Well we're not, We're not. That's the whole Yeah. Yeah, so, um,

(01:48):
what does it happen? It has, Yeah, all the elements
on it, and so elements of course by themselves are
in combination with a couple other elements make up the
matter that we see. Yeah, it's good to go back
to the two on the forearm. It's like the whole
even like even the idea that you could have a
tattoo that contained um all this data. It is pretty incredible.

(02:10):
It just tells you how how amazing the periodic table is.
It's like the the ultimate cheat sheet, you know. It's
like so much data. You know. It's like you see
like people who carry like a tip calculator card in
your wallet or something, you know, and it's just cram
full of numbers, you know, where some other kind of
little bits of reference cards that people carry around, and
and and you generally have to really abbreviate things big
time to make it right. You have to make it

(02:31):
really you have to make your scripts very very small.
Did you ever have exams, like in college or in
high school where you were allowed to bring in a
cheat sheet so you would just make it teeny teeny tiny,
But then you can't find anything on the cheat sheet
because it was so tiny, and you're in a panic
because you're trying to hustle through the test. Yeah, I remember.
I think I had some classes like that where they
were like you could fill up like one Q card,

(02:51):
you know, and but that was all you got, Yeah,
and then you never wind up referencing them, or maybe
you did. I don't know. If I can't speak for
you sneeze on them and you can't use them. First
periodic table was attempted back in the late eighteen hundreds,
and we have Russian chemist Dmitri mendal aev Um to
thank for that. He got pretty close in six nine,
and he leave the groundwork for what we have come

(03:14):
to know and love as the periodic table. Of course, Mendaliev,
who was a professor of chemistry at St. Petersburg, he
got a little help from another English chemist, a guy
by the name of Henry Moseley, who decided to use
atomic number rather than atomic way to organize the elements
in the table. But we'll get into those two terms
a little bit um. Some of you guys are definitely

(03:35):
already familiar with them, but we'll talk about them a
little bit more. And some of you may be looking
at a periodic table right now, which is cool. That
is cool. It would help. Like, unless you're driving, don't
do not pull up the periodic table. If you're driving,
I have to say that a million times. Don't do it. Yeah,
we just that's a warning that never gets old. Periodic
table and driving are not don't do it. So nowadays

(03:55):
we have a periodic table that starts with hydrogen and
it ends with an element one eighteen or nun octium.
Those are really fun to say, don't you think that's great?
That could be a good band name. If you're looking
at a periodic table, you you notice that elements one
thirteen through get these temporary names. Yeah, and those names
are just Latin for the elements atomic number, So untrium

(04:17):
for element one thirteen, that's that's just gonna be the
atomic number until it gets a permanent place in the pantheon,
that is periodic table. That was a lot of peas
and one sentence. Yeah, it's like if you have a
literate kittens born, you're just like, it's better to name
them like numbers one through twelve until you're really sure
sticking around right right. It's kind of this Latin limbo
on the periodic table until the whole verification process goes through.

(04:43):
So I gonna ask, what's your favorite element name? And
I'm talking about true or or real elements as supposed
to fictional ones. Well, there are a lot of great ones,
but I think I like scandium. You do. Why do
you like scandium? What it? There's like a like scandium
there's a sense of like scamps and like it's fun
to say scandal, scandal. It sounds kind of sinister, you know. Um,

(05:07):
I like Seaborg Um, it's it's got a nice ring
to it. It makes me think of a racehorse. Yeah,
that one was actually um discovered by professor Ernest Suborg nine. Right,
another mention of Ernest borgnine. No, that was named after
Glenn Seaborg. And there's a great picture of him in
our article which we're you know, a lot of the

(05:28):
researches is coming from today. We have how the periodic
table works, and that was written by Craig, Craig Ford
and Rich So thinking Craig. But anyway, back to Glenn Seaborg.
He's the he's the guy who suggested pulling out the
lanthanoids and actinoids and placing them below the table to
make it more compact. So not only does he have
an element named after him on the table, which is

(05:49):
no small feat, he's the one who who kind of
influenced the way you the way it's laid out on
the page. So it's pretty cool. So the table, the
the ultimate table, has inspired a lot of fix. Yes, well,
it's way it's one of your favorites. My my absolute
favorite is the table of Transitional Elements from the British

(06:11):
um a comedy Look Around You, which was I've mentioned
before on this podcast. It's like a mock documentary about science.
And I know this was with Leonard Hatred, right, yes,
with Leonard Hatred, isn't it. And actually have a copy
of this, uh this fake periodic table over my desk,
and it has things like like music is on there,
um and nothing is on there with an atomic like

(06:32):
weight of zero, and just just it's just it's worth
looking up. It's it's available online. It's just got all
these just that everything is ridiculous. Like France, Uh it's
on their water is on there. That's pretty good. Yeah,
we get a lot of the periodic tables sent to
us in the fake nature. I think people think, well,
you know, those guys will appreciate them. Yeah, it's become

(06:52):
an internet meme kind of thing, like like what's your
favorite that you've seen? Um, when I was hungry, it
was definitely the fake table of cupcakes, remember that the
Katie of I don't know if I saw that, Steph,
you missed in history class, Well, don't tell Katie that
because I think you're emailed on there. There's also one.
Then I came across it was a periodic table of swearing,
which I don't necessarily advise you to go to because

(07:14):
it's pretty graphic. I saw one and uh one for
the periodic table of metal I believe like heavy metal,
and this one's really interesting and that is that when
when I looked it up, it's like there were comments
at the bottom of the page and everybody was complaining
because everybody's was like everybody's particular favorite metal act was

(07:35):
left off or didn't have as much prominence as they
thought it should have. So people were like, like, dude,
we're Slayer on this or or how can please tell
me Metallica was number one? Well, I don't know how.
I forget how it was that was ranking, Robert, how
can you not bring that critical information? Well? But I
did notice that Mi Sugar was not on there, and
I was like, they're really good. Why are they not

(07:56):
on here? But I don't really know metal all that well.
But but the point being is it if you set
out to make a periodic table of metal, you cannot
include everything. You end up leaving important to some people
important things off. Are you insinuating that there's stuff left
off their real periodic table? You know, I'm I'm pointing
out that the real periodic table is is that awesome

(08:16):
because it's so inclusive. It's inclusive in ways that a
periodic table of metal cannot be agreed. Agreed, But I think,
I mean, I do want to talk about this a
little later. But I'm not sure that everything is on
the periodic table. I mean, there are mysteries yet to
be discovered. They're true, it's not complete. There's definitely work
to be done in particle accelerators in which different elements
are another but no that scientists aren't coming up to

(08:39):
like the periodic table and like being like, dude, how
come gold didn't make this list? You know? Agreed, Agreed.
You know, it's like the really important stuff is there.
It's just we're sort of, yeah, we're still curious. So
let's break down the contents of the periodic table. What's
in a box, one element at a time, and we're

(09:00):
not going to do all the elements. Let's just take
a really really really long podcast. Sorry, Jerry um So gold,
Let's just go for gold, Go for the gold. And
where will we find this if for people playing along
at home, UM, well, gold is going to be atomic
number seventy nine, So you may or may not see

(09:23):
uh the actual element name gold written out, but we
will see definitely element symbol. You will see the atomic
number seventy nine, which is going to denote the number
of protons that um gold has. And you're also going
to see um gold atomic weight. But let's let me
let me number right. Yeah, but let me back up

(09:44):
for one second. Um it is worth spending just a
second on atomic number. So like we said, you see
the number seventy nine to uh demarcate gold, So to
seventy online is telling you that gold has seventy one
protons like I was just saying. And protons you guys
remember just those particle us with a positive charge in
its nucleus. So if you have a neutral atom of gold,

(10:04):
you're also gonna have seventy nine electrons. And you don't
necessarily have to remember that. The important thing there is
just remember gold seventy nine protons, and those seventy nine
protons are what gives gold it's spot, it's special spot
on the periodic table. You're also going to run into
atomic weight on the periodic table, and it's a little different.
I mean, if you're to not have heard anything about

(10:25):
the periodic table before, you might have thinked that you
might have thought that this is the way that the
table would have been organized by weight, right, like weight
classes and wrestling or boxing, you know, or any kind
of sport. Right, that makes sense, And and it and
it is somewhat and and this is the mistake that
the Russian chemist made because he he went and ordered
the table, yes, thank you, Medelaef, he ordered it by

(10:49):
by atomic weight instead of atomic number. And that was
not quite the right way to go about it. And
that's because atomic weight kind of fluctuates a little, right, Well, yeah,
so you human weight. You guys are going to remember
that there are a couple of different flavors of an
element out there, you know, the isotopes. I wonder if
scientists are cringing right now right now, hearing me called flavors.

(11:10):
But I hope the science, like I said before, I
hope the scientists are not tuning in too like, you know,
refresh on what the periodic table. They should have this down,
I think they do. They should have a tattooed on
their forearm. So goldway is almost one and ninety six
point nine six six five six nine atomic units. Got that?
Got it? Okay, so seventy two atomic number and a

(11:33):
hundred points something something something atomic units. And like you
were just saying, yeah, an element has different isotopes. So
think about carbon, one of the most plentiful elements on
the Earth, and that has seven different isotopes. So the
atomic weight really um reflects an atom's average mass as
it's found in nature. Okay, got that? Got it? Yeah,

(11:56):
So if you're in a group of the periodic table, wait, wait,
you'd wind up with kind of a different table. So,
for example, if you're looking at it now, cobalt and
nickel would have to be switched because cobalt has a
greater atomic weight than nickel. That's kind of cool. It
just throws you off a little bit. Now, scientists can
be tricky. They can't. Now, Some periodic tables also include

(12:17):
mention of its physical state, right, Yeah, what it's what
it's like when it's hanging around the Earth at a
normal temperatures, at room temperatures. So what's gold going to be? Solid? Excellent?
Solid gold? I kind of wanted you to say solid
Do you remember that show, the Solid Gold's Answers. There's
a really awesome musical act that goes that the name
of solid gold. Yeah. Do you know any songs that

(12:40):
you want to sing right now? I can't sing them,
but they're good. Yeah. So the interesting thing about physical
state is that, apart from a couple of elements that
exist as liquids at room, mostly the bulk of the
elements that we know of hanging out in their solid state. Yeah,
they're solid, like mercury, right ye, and francium. Francium. That's

(13:01):
a little bit of the element. Don't you think francy
francium unless it's a hard see francium, But I would
think that would be okay, So I'm gonna I'm gonna
go with francium. If any of you guys wanna write
in and tell us about the etymology of francium, please
do so. And then there's of course a smaller bunch
on the periodic table that we're going to hang out

(13:22):
as gasses. So this was interesting. If you imagine making
a sort of small rough triangle that's going across the
top right corner of the periodic table, then you kind
of have a good idea of where most of the
gases are located on the table. So there's a group
that you guys may remember called the noble gasses or
the inert gasses, and they are the uttermost right hand

(13:45):
column if you're looking at a periodic table. So that's
what helium, neon are gone, crypton and right on. Yeah,
but then you have to throw in a couple more
like hydrogen and nitrogen, oxygen, chlorine and flour in and
and that covers you for gasses. Okay, what else are
you gonna tell? If you're looking at the little box

(14:08):
on a periodic table, Gold's box, we might be able
to tell its classification. So that's just what family it
belongs to. Is it a metal? Is it a metal lloyd?
Is it halogen? Is it one of those noble gases
that we're just talking on. And a lot of these
periodic tables us like color coding to denote some of
these things. Yeah, it does vary wildly though, Like I

(14:29):
saw one that was arranged according to the elements discovery.
I should restate that the elements on the periodic table there,
their place doesn't change, but the colors do. And depending
upon how delex your periodic table is. Like you, let
me look at your iPhone, which I was wowed enough
by because I'm such a laggard in technology, and it
had that really cool iPhone app that was from E M. D.

(14:51):
I believe D a dog. Yeah yeah, yeah, free free app.
There are a number of different periodic table apps, and
then they're really cool because you can just you touch it,
you know, pop up an element, get all the stats
on it. Yeah. It gives you a ton of information,
and so that's cool. So you might learn stuff like
it's atomic radius, it's melting and boiling points, it's density,

(15:11):
it's oxidation state, it's mineral hardness, ice tubes and their prevalence, ionization, energy,
and electron configuration, among other things. So that's what you're
gonna get with a really premium quality periodic table, a
whole lot of information. Yeah, so what can you tell
by looking at the whole table? Okay, So a table
is going to be organized in rows. It's pretty easy

(15:34):
to picture, and these rows, confusingly enough, are often called
periods as well. So I'm gonna I'm just gonna call
them rows for this for this podcast, just so you
guys don't have to think about periods too. Um. So
each role is going to tell you a little something
about how the electrons of that element behave in their
energy levels. Their shells are occupied by the electrons that

(15:56):
you know are kind of buzzing around the nucleus of
that element. Okay, so if you're looking at hydrogen and helium,
that's going to tell you that it um these two
elements to have a first energy level that can only
hold two electrons max. So that's what that one denotes.
It has that one level for electrons essentially. So let's
go down one. We're gonna shift to the second row,

(16:19):
and then you're gonna have two energy levels now, and
that's where so the first energy level be filled with
electrons and you're gonna have another one and that begins
to fill and these there there. I should mention that
these levels also have sub levels called orbitals, but this
is a podcast and I feel like, yeah, we don't
want to get to depth there, so that's why it's

(16:40):
a table and not a song. So it goes all
the way up to seven. Um. There are seven different
energy levels, each with their own sub levels. Except for
that first row, no known element yet has eight energy
levels full of electrons. So that's kind of cool. So
looking at your periodic table, yep, hydrogen us just that

(17:00):
one energy level and whoa franci Um, again mentioned on
the podcast, has seven. Wow. See, don't don't rule out
francium just because you don't like its name. It's gotta
it's got a lot going on her at least it's
got a lot of electrons gone on. Francium would be
a good name for a cat, I think. Okay, so
we got our rows right. Well, of course we have
columns because it's a table. So the columns that comprise

(17:24):
the periodic table are called groups. How many in total?
Eighteen eighteen? That's okay, that's okay. So groups I are
just going to indicate, um, these families that we're talking
about with similar chemical and physical properties, so like again
the noble gases um. And you can also detect a

(17:45):
couple of trends when you're looking at the periodic table. Right,
So now we know about you know, different energy levels.
Just by looking at it, we can tell and now
we know that what family it's in because again a
lot of them are metals. In fact, of the elements
are roughly, the elements on the periodic table are metals.
At the metal is going on, Yeah, actual metal, not

(18:08):
not heavy metal, right, we should we should clarify because
we're talking about that earlier. You can you can detect
a couple of other things if you want to wow
your friends with your periodic table knowledge. So, ionization energy, right,
what is ionization energy? Again, it's really it's pretty straightforward.
It's just the amount of energy that an element and
an atom of an element has to exert to strip

(18:29):
away the first balance electron. And that's that's the the
outermost electron. That's that's farthest from the nucleus, the one
that's really right for the picking. If you will write
the plate of the element, if you will, so, looking
at your periodic table, the ionization energy tends to decrease
as you move down a column and increase as you
move across a row from left to right. So you

(18:50):
doing that. Yeah, So that's ionization energy in a in
a bit of a nutshell or an orbital shell. Nice um,
And you can also tell some stuff about electro negativity,
and electro negativity is going to tell us about how
good elements are at attracting electrons to them. So electro
negativity is gonna again decrease as you go down a
column and increase as you go across a row from

(19:12):
left to right. Okay, So if you're looking at it now,
you can tell ionization energy and you can tell electro negativity.
You can help tell um how good it is that's
stripping away electrons, and you can tell at how good
it is at attracting electrons to them. Got it? Got it? Okay,
So let's talk about nuclear charge. So this is going
to increase as you get down the table, and that

(19:35):
kind of makes sense considering that nuclear charge just means
the attractive force between the positive protons and the nucleus.
I guess that's redundant, the protons in the nucleus and
the the negative electrons in the energy shells. So the
more protons, the greater the nuclear charge. And I know
you guys are going to remember that what is atomic number.
Atomic number is just the number of protons you've got

(19:56):
going on in an element. So hydrogen, is it going
to of a really great nuclear charge? Probably not, because
it hasn't a topic number one something that's you know,
a heavyweight on the periodic table. Going to be a
little bit better. Where is that passium? It like one
oh eight would be pretty good winnt Yeah, I think

(20:19):
that's a heavyweight. If we were just talking about this
in the science for s monsters, I think hassium would win.
And then shielding is just the ability of an element
and it's inner electrons to shield the outer electrons from
from being stripped away from being stolen. So the more

(20:39):
energy levels, remember the energy levels increase as you get
on the table, the more shielding takes. So there's really
a lot of information here if you like. Some of
it is pretty obvious, and some of it you kind
of have to know how to look for. But yeah,
basically we know a lot about electron behavior and how
how good elements are taking them, taking electrons, stealing them,

(21:02):
attracting them. So back to francium for a second. How
do they choose these names? But it's a pretty complicated
process and it may take years, and so they're a
little superstitious about it. Scientists are I don't think they similar.
I think in a Jewish culture, you you don't talk
about names before a baby comes. You don't have like
showers and stuff like that. You just you do it.

(21:24):
All after the fact, and you can't just say, like,
I found an element, I'm calling it um, like boning
um or something. You know, you can't just come up
with something. Yeah, I think that's frowned upon, unless maybe
your Einstein. But Einstein back in the day, I'm not
so sure he could have gotten an element name officially
passed your you pack um. So it's reading a pretty

(21:44):
funny New York Times article on Element one seventeen back
when the Russians and the Americans produced it in April
two thousand ton and they're working at a Russian particle
accelerator and and they were pointing out that there's really
involved process. So one of the quotes that I liked
um until the New York Times reporter, Well, we've never

(22:05):
discussed names because it's sort of like bad karma, she said.
She it's like talking about a no hitter. During the
no hitter, we've never spoken of it. Allowed. So while
she was working on producing Element one seventeen, they just
they didn't talk about it. It was like the big
elephant or element in the room. Oh man, they should
call it the Scottish pladium. I love that because make

(22:25):
path Yeah. Sorry, And then The other interesting thing that
comes out of it is, um, how do we make
new elements? Well that, yeah, that's really interesting because you
mentioned particle accelerators yea, and it's like basically you want
to accelerate these particles and things like the large hidden collider. Um.
You know, I'm going really fast, and it's kind of

(22:47):
like you ever watched The Adams Family. Yeah, all right,
you know how go mass would set up the train
tracks so that the two trains would run into each other. Well,
they're doing that, except with particle streams, and the particles
hit and then you get pieces everywhere, and in the
wake of those pieces, things come together in uh new combinations,

(23:08):
but only for a brief amount of brief amount of time.
It's kind of like when like when couples break up
and then people are on the rebound and then those
those the new relationships only last for like a brief second,
the rebound relationship totally. Yeah, and then you only know
they existed by looking at the chaos that happened when
they came apart. It's the same thing if you look
for the decay products um, the aftermass of of these

(23:31):
new elements, right right, So um again, I was reading
this this New Yor Times article and they were talking
about how kind of simple, well simple simple an idea
um making un un septium might be. I do you
feel like I'm talking any language, which I guess I am,
well an old language Latin, when I say that septium

(23:53):
so element one seventeen. So what are you gonna do.
You're gonna try smashing calcium with its twenty protons to
the element name for Berkeley, which I'm gonna go with berkelium.
And uh, that element has protons, So what's that ninety
seven plus twenty to create an element with a hundred

(24:13):
seventeen protons, which is what un septium is. So we
can make this at home in our own particle definitely,
except for the fact that it's kind of hard to
create berkellium berke lium, I like berkeleum. Yeah. And then
the other tricky thing is, right, as you're alluding to before,
it's only for a second, it's fleeting, so you have

(24:36):
to be prepared to analyze the BKA products, and scientists
are more than capable of doing that, I am happy
to report. Yeah. The other interesting thing here is, I mean,
we are talking about the fleeting nature of some of
these new elements. But there's a theory going on the hunt.
As we move up in atomic number, we're approaching this
island of stability in which the heavier elements become more stable.

(24:57):
So maybe once we reach a critical point, it won't
be so hard to create these elements anymore. It would
be interesting And it comes back around like we're talking
about earlier. Um, it's not a finished table. Yeah, we
keep discovering new things, and we'll continue to discover new
things and add them to the table. So update regularly
if you have that fat app right, Yeah, no doubt.

(25:18):
I feel like we should. We should take a second
to just admire the glory of the periodic table, even
if it is an incomplete work. Because it is a complete,
incomplete work, does that make fun? Sort of yes? Wow.
So I think the only way to follow that up
is to chase it down with a little listener mail.

(25:39):
You have something there? Do? I have one from a
Jordan who wrote in response to the altruism in the
Animal Kingdom podcast. We did a little lot of that. Yeah,
and this is like choir animals nice to each other
kind of things. And we also talked fine. Our humans
every nice to each other, right, And one of the
things we mentioned was when people donate their organs to
complete strangers, and as sometimes this has been called like

(26:01):
the ultimate active altruism um so Jordan in wartening your
own life to help save somebody else's, Well, I don't
know that you're shortening your own life if you're giving
up a kidney giving away in Oregon, but not I'm
not sure. Sometimes it's framed that way, okay, So he
he wrote in to eliminate his own experience with giving

(26:22):
away a kidney to a complete stander. So I really
wanted to read this to you guys, so he writes,
I thought I would write in about your altruism podcast,
seeing as I have some experience with one of the topics.
Last year, I decided to donate one of my kidneys
to a stranger. The whole altruism topic was very strange
for me. I suppose there was part of me that
did it for a pat on the back, although it

(26:42):
wasn't conscious thought. After going through all the tests at
the hospital to see if I was if I was
a good candidate, they called me up in the middle
of an accelerated summer semester in grad school, so it's
a smart kidney too, saying that they needed my kidney now.
It became a logistically difficult prospect at that point, but
I decided that this was something bigger than my silly grades,
so I went for it. So Jordan goes on to

(27:04):
talk a little bit about the surgery um, and then
he goes I hadn't told any of my family except
for my wife, that I was doing this. My brother's
reaction was especially interesting. He refused to believe that I
hadn't done this for money, which is very illegal in
the United States. By the way, yes, I was actually
a little offended. He thought it wasn't possible for me
to do a selfless act. One of my family members

(27:25):
also mentioned the concern of what if I need a
kidney in the future. I found that while the majority
of people think my donation was commendable, others find the
idea of grotesque. Okay, you're ready for this, he says.
I did get some media attention, which I hated. It
was very strange to be put under the microscope and
have the media break apart such a complicated and emotional
topic into a sixty second newspiece. I hope and I

(27:47):
hope that you guys don't think we're doing this. I
really just wanted to share this liscertain email because I
didn't think it was an interesting insight into altruism. I
would never Yeah, I really appreciate his honesty and and
you know, you know, just sort of talking about how
it felt and throughout the process. So he mentions a
little bit mare. He says at this point, I don't
feel better, worse, or different for having donated. The act

(28:07):
itself has not changed myself in it. If anything, I
feel a little embarrassed when the topic is approached interestingly.
I feel more proud of myself for being a donor
advocate and volunteering, uh, doing some volunteer work. UM donation
has become an interesting science and math game for me.
My when kidney given to a stranger who started a
kidney exchange that allowed seven others to acquire a kidney,

(28:28):
that's cool. But I think if I can convince one
person to do the same thing, and I'll feel proud
a few more non directed donors like me and could
ship away at our huge waiting list. Is this altruistic?
I have no idea By the way, my grades didn't
suffer and I got straight a's. That's semester Jordan's. So
that's so interesting and in a cool story. I mean,
I think it's very commendable. Yeah. Absolutely so, as always,

(28:52):
we love to hear from you guys. Thank you Jordan
very much for writing and sharing, uh, sharing your story
with us on altruism and and kidneys. Yeah, if you
want to share anything with us science or kidney related,
do send us an email on science stuff at how
stuff first dot com. Yeah, like pretty much anything, you know,
but we're just sitting here, written and talking about science,

(29:13):
so we love to hear. We can probably spend a podcast,
you know, out of it if it's a kind of interesting, kiddit. Yeah,
we have to get to some of the science quotes
that people have said. Maybe we'll do that. Yeah, some
really good ones in there. Yeah. And as always, do
you connect with us on on Facebook we're stuff from
the Science Lab and on Twitter we are Lab stuff. Yeah.
So that's it. Thanks for listening, guys. For more on

(29:40):
this and thousands of other topics, is it how stuff
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