Play your cards right

Cool cat chem cards: making chemistry fun

Caroline Griffiths and John Griffiths

Carmarthen: Crown House 2005 | £8.99 | ISBN1 904 42498 8

This is a set of colourful playing cards which are based around facts associated with elements of the Periodic Table. Each pack contains 56 cards: two introductory cards, and a card each for 54 elements - five each from Groups 1-8, 12 common transition metals plus uranium and plutonium.  

The cards are double sided. One side gives the symbol, origin of name, and source of an element as well as its uses and a related fact. The reverse starts with five basic facts - atomic and mass numbers, density, and melting and boiling points. The facts for each element continue with cost per 100 g, its date of discovery, number of isotopes, electrical conductivity, ionisation energy and relative abundance in the solar system. All facts and statistics are clearly laid out for ease of use, though if one was being pedantic, the density figures would be better quoted in g cm^-3 instead of g dm^-3.