we definitely need a periodic table of periodic tables
we definitely need a periodic table of periodic tables
but would it contain itself ?
Obviously. It'd be one of the tables known to Harvard. Just leave enough room for the ones to be discovered.
one of the tables known to Harvard
This has the cadence of a reference, but Google didn't help me. Am I missing something?
It's from The Elements, by Tom Lehrer (the final lyric of the song).
This'd make a nice lyric. If only "Harvard" rhymed with "discovered".
With the right accent, they rhyme.
Every discovered table would contain items known to the state of California to be oncogenic.
you're suggesting a periodic table of all periodic tables that do not contain themselves. sounds doable.
If it is a periodic table of all periodic tables then yes it would contain itself. Obviously.
If it was a periodic table of all periodic tables except those that contain itself then it would only contain itself if it does not contain itself, I mean it would not contain itself if it does contain itself, I mean, goddam it Bertrand Russell, how did you find me here? I signed up to Hacker News hoping to escape you once and for all!
-Gottlob Frege
You complain that wrenches and drills are spread over several columns? Look at a periodic table please! The diagonal line splitting wrenches from drills is precisely the diagonal line splitting ordinary metals from non-metals. That’s one of the bits I’m most proud of!
You have no idea how long I agonized over how to make this arrangement not be arbitrary, while at the same time dealing with some of the realities of how many tools of different kinds there are in different broad groupings.
For example, as you say, wouldn't it make more sense for measuring tools to be the noble gases, since they don’t change anything, unlike basically all other tools? That’s one of the first things I decided to do, because it’s so obvious. But there are simply too many measuring tools I wanted to include: they had to go in the lanthanides and/or actinides, because those are bigger categories. Having a scale for additive vs. subtractive along an axis sounds great, but there are so many more subtractive tools than additive it would never work. Plus concrete tools, for example, didn’t even make the cut. They are literally not in there because, well, I just had too many other things to fit in that spark more joy for me (which is the ultimately the criterion for what I put in).
In general, what I tried to preserve was (a) similar basic function within columns, (b) tools get bigger/heavier as you go down a column, (c) transition metals are all related despite being spread over 10 columns, (d) lanthanides/actinides being similar within rows instead of within columns (because it’s like they are actually all supposed to go in the third column, but that would just make the thing too wide), and (e) there’s a diagonal line between metals and non-metals.
Beyond that I found a couple of small ways I could put in some analogies with actual chemical properties. For example, the halogens, which are hot, fiery elements, is where I put tools that use heat (soldering, welding, casting, 3D printing). But then I ran out of heat-related tools that made the cut to be categories, so I used the rest of that column for some categories that didn’t fit anywhere else: optical tools and toy tools. So sue me. Alkali earth metals (column 2) are not entirely dissimilar to alkali metals (column 1), so I put hammers in column 1 and things you might typically hit with a hammer in column 2. Imperfect, but there you go, and the counts worked out.
The only individual element I could pay homage to was copper, element 29: that’s where I put all the brass and bronze non-sparking tools (which means they are otherwise in the wrong place, because all the other transition metals are cutting tools, but in space 29 I’ve got brass hammers and bronze wrenches. By all means rag on me for that choice too.
I wanted to split single-edge cutting tools (knives, chisels, etc) and double-edge/edge-and-anvil cutting tools (nippers, shears, etc) into the early and late transition metals, but the counts just didn’t work out, so I tearfully gave up on that.
I’m happy someone at least noticed enough to complain, and actually it’s nice that I’m getting pushback on something as erudite as the suitability of my element/tool analogies, as apposed to, for example, my risible opinions on titanium hammers (which are reflected only in the book, not the poster).
As you say, I’m Theodore Gray and I should know better, right? Which is exactly why I just wrote an essay on why I’m right and this is not just an arbitrary jumble of tools! I spent months on this arrangement! OK, weeks, but it was a lot of time. I even wrote a Mathematica program that helped me pick 1- and 2-letter “element symbols” without ending up with any duplicates, even though that resulted in some weird and difficult-to-explain symbols (much as with actual atomic symbols).
In conclusion, please keep the hate flowing and buy my poster and book.
Thank you for coming to my TED talk, Theodore
My hobby is tool collecting and occasionally, my wife makes me do work around the house to justify the tool collecting. So, I really enjoyed your creation here! I was going through it today and ticking off all the categories I own tools for (I got 96) and discovered a bunch of opportunities to expand the collection. Thank you!
Plus concrete tools, for example, didn’t even make the cut
I must say I was surprised that hammers, fancy hammers, and mallets all got their own categories, while my noisy Husqvarna concrete demolition saw was bundled in the same category as regular circular saws. Now it makes sense!
The beautiful thing about art vs. science is that you get to be arbitrary if you like... The main reason there is a separate category for fancy hammers is that I needed a page in the book to rant about how stupid it is to put a titanium head on a hammer. (Every square in the poster represents a 2-page spread in my Tools book.)
Concrete tools are missing because I just don't do a lot of concrete work. Had I finished the book about a year later I might have put some in, because earlier this year I built a new studio that involved pouring a 3600sq ft slab with the help of my concrete foreman friend and his buddies. So messy! I don't like to write about categories of tools I have little or no experience with, so other things crowded out concrete and masonry tools, other than carbide drills and diamond saws (which are fascinating because of the steel/stone hardness ratio that determines which model blade you want, as described in the book).
This is a classic "we should refactor" without understanding the original architecture/decision making.
No doubt some of the issues you describe become apparent when you actually attempt the task, yet it's easy to propose a reasonable alternative.
Anyway, I love that we both have a rebuttal to the original as well as a firm defense from the OP.
Inclined planes form a column. Unguided inclined planes: knives, axes. Guided: planes, scissors. Inclined planes wrapped around cylinders: drills, screws.
Blunt objects form a column: Hammers, presses, brakes.
I agree with your categorizations involving tools that rely on heat, but I guess the problem with any such taxonomy is the next person comes along and goes "well I would do this differently, and that..."
Obviously everyone has their own classification. But TFA doesn't even distinct cutters from air pressure tools. I'd at least make a group for Fluid Workers: air compressor, water pump, hydraulic ram, hydraulic press.
Oh, yes, you found another place where I had to make an arbitrary placement. Air pressure tools just did not fit anywhere else, so I slapped them there in transition metals, which is unforgivable. See my longer comment for more whining about how it's not nearly as arbitrary as you make it out to be.
I've never heard anyone speak on this topic with such clarity. I'm sure you're well respected in the periodic table tooling configuration community.
Judging from this thread it sounds like most people think I'm an idiot, and/or didn't even try to organize the tools.... Perhaps my organizational principles are just too subtle.
What really surprised me, and speaks to the lack of a periodic table tooling configuration community, is that the domain periodictableoftools.com was unclaimed even late last year, well over 20 years into the era when someone surely would have thought of wanting it.
Yes. Good thoughts but bottom line, it's trying to shoehorn something completely different into a form that makes it appear sophisticated. I think it just undercuts science. The periodic table is formed by important features of reality recognized in the elements, ultimately originating in quantum mechanics. Pretending that the structure applies to any capricious thing conveys an idea that the structure and reality is itself arbitrary.
This has a great auxiliary use for those of us who don't know about all the tools, and/or don't know the names of the tools. It's going to make me sound a lot less stupid at the hardware store!
One of the great things about having a German speaking kid is the number of books that show all the entries in a given category (e.g. a huge book with hundreds of earth moving apparatus and the specific name of each)
In America I could only get close with farm animals and guns.
Could you recommend some titles? I not only enjoy German thoroughness, but I am also tickled by the schlamminvordstogezah style of German tool naming.
Sorry, kid has long grown up and moved out. I guess I’ll get a second wave when grandkids start appearing. But any bookshop kids’ section will have heaps of them. IIRC Gerstenberg Verlag was a good source, but that was a while ago.
Also the Was ist Was series had the best explanations of how real stuff (locomotives, printing press, sexual reproduction, etc) works. If you can’t find the books I’m sure some of the videos are on YouTube.
I'm chuckling a bit because I get this feeling of consternation every time I run into something that doesn't go very smoothly. For instance, learning I was using the wrong kind of hammer for roofing saved my wrist from breaking. I've been collecting woodworking and carpentry tools and teaching myself as I go. If you really want to develop some intuition for what to use and when then learn about the basics of carpentry and wood working: routing, planing, joining/jointing, sawing, drilling, gluing, sanding, and finishing. The difference between machine and hand tools often comes down to surface area and/or density (that may not be holistically correct, but it satisfies my bar for a rule of thumb).
I often find myself thinking, "I wish someone made a tool that would do X," and when X is a common enough task, someone probably does! I'm looking forward to using this resource to help me check if something already exists that would make my life easier!
Whenever I misname a tool I can tell my dad wishes I had never been born. lol
Can't agree more. When we get tool or parts catalogues through work on the break room table, I recommend to all our graduates they spend time going through it, and to look up things they don't understand. Knowing the tool for the job already exists can save so much time and money, and while that genre of tool may change significantly, it applies to all fields of engineering.
For those people who find this frustratingly incorrect/incomplete - this is an art project, not a an attempt at creating a taxonomy of tools.
For those people who have little experience with the trades - this is an art project, and building up your understanding of tools from this resource probably isn't a great idea.
For those people who can't get the screwdriver bits image out of their mind - I'm with you.
We know. I think the main objection is that it is just more noise and clickbait that really teaches nothing[0], or this case, buybait.
[0] I think it actually unteaches things as it obfuscates the point of the shape of the periodic table.
Definitely buybait and a shame that a blatant advertisement has made to YC news front page. What's next? Novelty toothpaste for nerds?
Novelty toothpaste for nerds?
One that changes color the longer you brush so that you know you've brushed sufficiently (and not just blood-red to indicate your gums are now bleeding).
One that changes color based on where the calculus on your teeth accumulated, so you can target you brushing.
One that does the brushing for you, just keep it in your mouth for 3 minutes and rinse.
Oh lord...
One that changes color based on where the calculus on your teeth accumulated, so you can target you brushing.
This exists, although for some reason I'm not aware that it's available as part of a toothpaste. (Maybe the toothpaste foam would create false positive indications by making it seem to accumulate in places that don't actually have plaque.)
Blast! I was hoping readers would be too young to remember and I would get the credit. \O_O/ ... I used to get these from the dentist as kid in the 70's.
For what it's worth, I had absolutely nothing to do with the post: I didn't make it or encourage anyone to make it. I just noticed a sharp uptick in sales earlier today. Which I love since I spent a lot of time and money designing the poster and getting it printed. Here's the real buy bait: Please buy my book and poster! You can find the book "Tools" on Amazon, and the poster at theodoregray.com
Also for what it's worth, it's a very cool art project! And I'm always happy to have more computer nerds get an introduction to the tools required to make stuff in the physical world.
I find myself unreasonably frustrated by this arrangement. "Screwdriver Bits" are not the base level of the screwdriver column -- "Screwdrivers" are. And the second column from left is just a mess: stampers are similar to rivets are similar to nail guns... how?
I'm sure this is a personal preference thing but (to me) the columns should be thematically similar, off the top of my head (I am not skilled at manufacturing nor construction):
1. Things that pound things into other things (hammers)
2. Things that twist things into other things (screwdrivers)
3. Things that join things (staples, rivets, etc. -- yes, I get that this covers both nails and screws)
4. Things that shape things
5. Things that split things
6. Things that cut things
7. Things that break things down
8. Things that mix things
9. Things that contain things
10. Things that move single things
11. Things that move aggregate things
12. Things that etch things
13. Things that measure the size of things
14. Things that measure the mass of things
15. Things that measure force
16. Things that measure other attributes?
I'm sure there are more.
things that have just broken a flower vase, things that tremble as if they were mad, suckling pigs
I'm not sure how this is a valid criticism? I gave actual categories of things-tools-do. You just made up nonsense tasks?
It's a reference to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celestial_Emporium_of_Benevole...
Thanks, TIL!
(a) screwdriver bits come above screwdrivers for one simple reason: the mouth bit holder is hilarious and I wanted to put it at the top of the column. (b) column 2 is things you can hit with a hammer: that's why it has stamps, rivets, and nails. It follows hammers because alkali earth metals are somewhat chemically related to alkali metals (e.g. reactive with water to evolve hydrogen, which makes both columns fun to play with). Nail pullers are at the bottom of hammers instead of the bottom of column 2 because the counts worked better that way.
I'll start by saying it's a great concept, and beautifully executed in general. And I'm sorry to be one of several piling on about perceived (I did say I was "unreasonably" frustrated with the arrangement) shortcomings of the arrangement.
All to say, thanks for making something interesting enough to disagree with/about, and thanks for the clarifications.
I like the cataloging, but I dont see the periodic part of this.
"The arrangement follows loosely the characteristic of the regular periodic table: tools with similar functions in each column, getting heavier as you move down the rows."[1]
I can see perhaps not agreeing with their decisions, so maybe the groupings don't look correct to you, but they seem to have made some effort to be "periodic".
I'm not criticizing you for this, obviously, but "heavier" is a silly attribute to increase as you go down the table. It makes sense for the actual periodic table, but here something like "complexity" "modernity" or "scale" would have made much more sense (to me, obviously).
But atoms literally get heavier as you go down the table. If the actual elements were ordered in complexity of compounds, hydrogen would be at the bottom of the table, and periodic table posters would have to come with a special “carbon” sticker to attach to the floor.
Yes, I'm agreeing that mass (or more accurately, proton count) makes sense for the elements. I'm saying it doesn't make sense for tools.
It feels like they were perhaps hindered by wanting to conform to the chemical periodic table format.
This displays what I would consider to be a fairly limited knowledge of tools.
Saws, for instance, take a variety of forms, and lumping all of the large ones into "big saws" rather ignores the fact that their use is fundamentally dependent on what kind of saw they are. Not their size. And perplexingly, miniature table saws are lumped in with other big saws.
I'd also submit that a bung hole auger (lumped in with antique augers) is a reaming tool, not a drilling tool. Though one of the ones shown is a combination tool. There's an auger at the front to drill the hole, followed by the reamer to ream the taper. The important bit is still the reamer though, meaning the tool could properly be called a bung hole reamer.
Too pedantic. I don't think the categories are meant to imply that the tools are similar to each other.
Agree about pedantic. But “periodic table” for me implies some similarity.
Please see my long rant on this subject. There is quite a lot of periodic table structure....
Yeah I was also expecting a more well-thought-out structure given the periodic table layout.
OK, you've made the first criticism I actually agree with! Bung hole augers do belong with reamers, not with augers. In my defense, they are called bung hole augers, and all the ones I have are antique, so they naturally gravitated to the antique augers category, but I should have known better, and for that I am sorry. Some of them don't even have augers at the front!
The criticism of saws I reject: I split them by material in columns (wood- v.s metal-cutting), and by size vertically (getting heavier/more powerful as you go down a column). Bow saws are under hacksaws kind of out of desperation, but there are at least as many metal-cutting bow saws as wood-cutting. In fact given the popularity of hacksaws, perhaps in modern times that is the more common application of this style of stretched blade.
Was I alone in expecting software engineering tools?
It would probably be very interesting, since everything old is new. A column with RRD/Graphite/Grafana, inetd/systems/Kubernetes, fat/ext2/btrfs, Lustre/GlusterFS/Ceph, grep/ack/ripgrep
If columns were arranged as "can be used as a quick and dirty substitute for" going up and "subsumes but is often overkill for" going down I guess we'd wind up with a Periodic Tree of Tools (with emacs and web browsers somewhere near the trunk)?
I wanted to include them. Believe me, I wanted to! My publisher felt strongly that I should not stretch the definition of tools into metaphor. Beds are tools: they help you sleep better. There's just too many narrow-definition tools I needed to fit in. Otherwise I would have been more than happy to including a dig about how Jupyter Notebooks are a poor imitation of my Mathematica notebook design.
I indeed thought about software tools although not software engineering in particular. More like classic Unix tools.
Amused to see the 10mm socket in an "in case of emergency break glass" box. So true about 10mm, though I'd lean towards the 10mm box wrench. I've disassembled many a motorcycle with not much more than that.
Amazingly this is an actual product you can buy.
The emergency 10mm box used to available to purchase from a couple chain stores in Australia. I bought a good few as gifts.
Yeh, I love that the table has that playful sense of fun.
Did I miss profile gauge?
Unfortunately fixed gauges (feeler gauges, spark gap tools, profile gauges, wire gauge tools, bolt sizers, etc) didn't make it into any of the top-level categories, so they are lumped in with the mess of "Other Tools": https://www.periodictableoftools.com/Categories/Other.html
Some day I might create some new rows, because there are a lot of important categories that are completely absent.
Depends. They had dial instruments and micrometers, but not like spark “feeler” plug gauges. Also no voltmeters (they had powered equipment though)
Come to think of it, I didn’t notice some of tools you’d need to work on an engine.
This is one of my few pet peeves on the internet. The periodic table of X often isn't periodic, and shouldn't look anything like the periodic table of elements.
The author added granite surface plates at atomic #69 (way out in the lanthanides) because:
> Granite flats can be used as mounting surfaces for machines that need to stay very accurately aligned. Dozens of these huge precision granite blocks were sold as scrap to a local stone dealer, and I happened to pull up in their lot just after they had unloaded them. Blocks were piled up everywhere, blocking the driveway and generally making a nuisance of themselves, so the owner offered to sell me a bunch cheap just to get them out of his hair. I was told that the two mounting surfaces on each block are flat and parallel within millionths of an inch. This could be true, and if it is you’re looking at some of the most expensive lawn furniture in the world. I rented a rough-terrain forklift to arranged them in my front yard. There they remain to this day, 25 years later. 25 million years from now they will probably still be there, buried under the debris of a thousand civilizations come and gone. [1]
Not to be a debbie downer but there's zero order to this "periodic" table. If there were, the granite plates would be somewhere in the first couple of rows as the foundation to the industrial revolution. We wouldn't have had precision manufacturing or 95% of the modern tools on that table without them. Building them was the first time humans figured out how to make perfect flat surfaces without which our world wouldn't be possible.
See my long comment in this thread: I categorically reject the notion that there isn't any order to my arrangement of tools. It's actually quite detailed in how it follows the chemical structure, because your pet peeve is also my pet peeve. I wrote a whole book about the actual periodic table ("The Elements" by me), so it's a subject dear to my heart. Please look more closely.
(Also, I would name gauge blocks over granite flats as fundamental to precision, but in any case, all measuring tools are in the same row because they are related, just as are the lanthanides and actinides.) They are at the bottom because that's where they fit most naturally. My logic they should be the noble gasses, because they don't change anything. But there were too many I wanted to include. It was anodizing having to move them to a larger space.
Could they have chosen a worse image to depict Screwdriver Bits?
I put screwdrivers bits at the top of the drivers column specifically because I think that photo is hilarious and I want to make it as prominent as possible. This is why 3D printers were invented.
Haha I had the opposite reaction. This page was worth checking out for that alone.
This is really cool. He sure owns a lot of tools! You could make a pretty neat display of them in a museum. Way more interesting than endless paintings and porcelain.
I do actually have a small museum in my studio... but it's rather small and informal. You can see some of it in this interview: https://kk.org/cooltools/theodore-gray-co-founder-of-wolfram...
There is such a thing where I live. A guy collected random tools, including tools from a dentist. It's a lot of household things and farm implements from the 19th and 20th centuries. His collection is now a museum. I can't find a good website unfortunately.
I like the "Grabbers" section. I'm always on the lookout for different types of grabbers or long cutters. I find that no matter how esoteric, the tool will end up being invaluable on some little project in the future. Lately, I have been collecting a lot of medical style grabbers like hemostats and laparoscopic operating tools. Just the other day, despite all my various little grabbers, I realized I needed something that can grab a stiff, round object as I was fishing wire through the attic for some new lighting. It probably would have saved me 30 minutes or more. So I'm on the lookout for a good option for that.
Allow me to introduce you to uterine tenaculum forceps: https://periodictableoftools.com/Items/T0472.html
The majority of comments here are pedantic nitpicking about proper tool categorization, improper use of the term "periodic", etc. Why?
This is someone's art project, it's pretty cool. Enjoy the thing if you like it! It's not meant to be an encyclopedia.
A good way to improve the thread is to write about something you like or found interesting the submission. Writing meta about how terrible the thread is just makes it worse.
No Burke bar among pry bars? Sacrilege!
Try a Johnson bar, same thing, but with wheels.
I really like the idea but it needs to be a giant poster. On my 13" laptop screen it's so tiny and so compact that it presents an all-out high-frequency visual information assault on my senses. It's very unsettling and uncomfortable to use, for that reason. I really just want everything to be spread out a bit more.
This more of a random sampling than anything attempting to include the most important tools. For example, the hammers section has a foam Minecraft pickaxe but doesn't have a slide hammer.
There's a slide hammer in the book and on the website, just not in the poster. I wanted to include a bit of humor, sorry.
Since this is just begging to be hung in a workshop / man-cave, I'd like to mention a related poster: [0]
Extra legit because Nick Offerman's non-acting job is running a woodworking shop.
[0] https://www.nbcstore.com/products/parks-and-recreation-swans...
So you can in fact hang it in your shop, I'd like to mention this link for buying my periodic table of tools poster: https://home.theodoregray.com/printed-products
So many old friends. I miss TechShop.
There's MakerNexus as an alternative now.
very cool. It would be nice to have this for bike tools.
I feel like this could be better visualized in a tech tree.
Thank you for sharing. Seems like well organized dataset. I like datasets that connect the real world to the digital world
The micrometers (you need one for every 25mm, e.g. 0-25mm, 25-50mm, 50-75mm, etc. is very interesting!).
>>> This thing is called a chain whip. No, it’s not what you think. It’s a wrench, but with no way to close the chain into a ring. So how can you use it to grip anything?
It's for grabbing a sprocket on a bike wheel.
Just today I put https://mitpressbookstore.mit.edu/book/9780762498307 on my Amazon wish list.
I guess I was expecting things like the wheel, lever, and pulley.
I love these books, my favorite is the Engines[1] one but this one is a close second.
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Engines-Inner-Workings-Machines-World...
Woohoo! There's tools here I don't have.
As a former chemist and all-around maker, I love this and this bugs me all at once. I love the concept, but as others have pointed out, this is less a "periodic table" and more "grab bag of related things". You see these all over the place: foods, drinks, cars, etc. All table, no periodicity. Why are wrenches and drills strewn across three groups? Put the wrenches in one group, drills in the other. Impact drivers somewhere in between.
There's some vague grouping, but it's pretty hodge podge.
The way I would do it, is use electronegativity (tendency to give or remove electrons) as a proxy for additive/subtractive. Atomic weight is a proxy for actual weight/scale. Group I would be like clay forming (the OG additive process), concrete, FDM, SLS, injection molding, casting. Group II is a bit less additive, more bonding: hot glue, soldering, brazing, welding. Halogens hog out material: thermic lance, plasma cutter, laser, waterjet. Chalcogens: hand router, (power) router, lathe, mill.
Metrology doesn't add or subtract, so obviously that's your Noble group.
Transition metals are all the fasteners. Lanthanides/Actinides are all the weirdos. I'd also add a group for just the simple machines. I think it's more important to have groups, periodicity, and trends, than sticking to the exact shape/size of the periodic table of elements.
This is Theodore Gray too! Author of a bunch of books and posters on chemistry.
Well, you know what they say, if you want something done right...