Celebrating the 150th anniversary of this important approach to understanding chemistry, Welcome to what the United Nations’ Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (better known as UNESCO) has designated the International Year of the Periodic Table of Elements.
The source of the periodic table goes back to Dmitry Mendeleev. Faced with the discovery of a growing number of elements for the four substitutions deposited in the middle Ages, it was clear that there was a need to find a way to organize them.
A tradition many chemists followed, Mendeleev’s structure was based on the similarity of chemical behavior. He used it to make predictions about the properties of then-unknown elements at intervals. Although the reasons for the patterns in the table were unknown at the time, the recognition of their existence helped guide the interpretation of the form of the behavior of the valence electrons of the elements.
UNESCO said, “The activity will highlight the contribution of chemistry and other basic sciences in implementing the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.” Here you can find a calendar of events and how to get involved in some chemistry-loving fun.
Whether it is really important to pay more attention to the periodic table as important as it is to the development of science, the whole year should be left to debate. After all, it is developing status as a popular culture icon through the use of its letters for the spelling of songs, novelty versions, and coded messages. People are using their basic structure to draw attention to other things they want to celebrate. On the other hand, there is no doubt that Indigenous languages need all the help they can get, so the UN General Assembly has decided to have more than one year to celebrate more than one thing and make 2019 the Year of Indigenous Languages, inviting UNESCO to promote their importance.
Thousands of languages were spoken around the world long ago, but they are disappearing in parallel with the extinction of endangered species. Indigenous languages may not be subject to climate change or prey, but popular languages affect them as an invasive species. Since each language encodes a unique way of looking at the world, the loss is not only to the descendants of the people who once said it but also to the rest of the world.
The United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues estimates that 40 percent of the world’s spoken languages are currently at risk. Several places have succeeded in recovering endangered indigenous languages, most teaching them in schools, but most lack the will or resources. There are also multiple official UN titles as 2019 is the year of international accession, perhaps a thing that is more endangered than a few languages. Unnecessary people can wait until 2024 by any one of these, which has already been nominated for the International Age.
