An Elemental Fascination  

Sometimes the best things in life are just a big mistake. My writing PopSci's chemistry column the past few years? All based on a complete misunderstanding.
I read in Oliver Sacks’s Uncle Tungsten that Sacks liked to visit a periodic table at the Kensington Science Museum in London, and I actually thought it was a real table with samples sitting on it for people to look at. Disappointed to learn that it was just a wall display, I resolved that I was going to build a proper periodic-table table.

It’s been downhill ever since. First, I started collecting elements to go on the table. Then I started writing about them for my Web site, periodictabletable.com. Then PopSci offered me a column. Pretty soon I was hanging out late at night in the back alleys of the Internet, looking for a fix of uranium or another hit of gadolinium.