I felt lucky that the math teacher I was subbing for yesterday had a planning period before her classes, because I needed it to review linear equations, particularly plotting parallel and perpendicular lines. But once I recalled how to determine the slope, I was feeling much more confident. It also reminded me of how fascinating I found the perpendicular rule when I first learned it —the whole notion of using the negative reciprocal of the slope for the new line just tickles my brain the right way. It also reminds me that there is an elegant order for so many things, if only we recognize the patterns.
I had the same feeling last week in a sixth-grade science class when the teacher explained how the early periodic table was stumbled upon by Dmitri Mendeleev in the 1860s. Mendeleev was a chemist and card collector who designed a set of cards based on the known elements. He arranged his cards by atomic weight and then in columns by common properties. As he played with the arrangement, he saw gaps in his table, predicted they would be filled by elements yet to be discovered, and described the characteristics of those future elements.
Mendeleev is widely considered a genius not for creating the order, but for recognizing it.
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