How should I build an additional periodic table?

Question

Recently, I was going through the magical materials that existed in one of my fantasy settings. It was all going swimmingly, when a thought occurred to me: "You know, I should figure out how chemistry works with these things". I have been tortured and racked ever since trying to get something respectable to work, but I think I have the start of a solution:

I should invent an additional periodic table.

Even leaving aside the patachemistry, I know it's a laughable amount of work. But that leads us to my question:

What principles should I keep in mind during my project?

I'm not trying to invent new materials that could actually exist on the real periodic table; I know that trying to squeeze more elements onto it is impossible, so I've handwaved it and said "magic can be used to ascend ordinary elements onto this new table". The new elements don't use the same protons or neutrons as the originals, so I think that covers their "being able to exist". The problem comes from wanting to be unique. I do not want to have a one-to-one correspondence between the actual periodic table and my creation. That means that not only are there real elements that can't be ascended, there are ascended elements that can't be created (ignoring for now how they come into being). I could even change the shape of the table as I see fit.

I don't have too many pata-elements invented yet, and I would like to know how to stitch my new periodic table together so that it looks authentic. I want to know what I should keep in mind with periods and columns, for example, or where I could place liquids. How do I decide what everything should weigh, where should the gases go, things like that.

In short, what principles should I keep in mind while designing a pataphysical periodic table?

Answer 1

I have no idea what pataphysical or patachemistry mean, but when it comes to developing the magical version of the Periodic Table of Elements, I recommend you do the following.

1. Ignore atomic weights, electrons, protons, and neutrons completely. You can't crowbar magic into science in that way and you'll give yourself cancer trying.

2. Remember that the Periodic Table is called that because the behavior of the elements is periodic. Generally speaking, everything in a column has similar attributes. Everything in a row has similar attributes. You'll organize (group) your magical chemicals according to their similar (periodic) attributes.

3. You need to choose what those similar attributes are. I'll be honest with you, asking us to help you with that aspect of this project would require you to do so much work identifying the various properties of the magical materials to avoid question closure that by the time you were done you'd have answered the question yourself.

And I recommend you following an axiom of good engineering:

K.I.S.S — Keep It Simple, Stupid!

• In real life, what a chemical looks like has nothing to do with its position on the periodic table. In your table, what it looks like (blue vs. red, powder vs. liquid) might make more sense.

• How the chemicals react to something common, like water, would help you group them.

• What aspect of magic the chemical is used for would be a natural grouping. Does your magic system use Nature? (earth, wind, fire, water, etc.) or a type? (healing, death, combat...) Those would be natural groupings.

• How must the chemicals be stored? In the dark? In the cold? Next to gold? That, too, would be a natural grouping.

Hopefully this helps you get started. The Periodic Table simply groups things in a way that helps people quickly identify the basic nature of a chemical. You're going to do the same thing — just in terms of magic rather than electrons, protons, and neutrons.

Answer 2

3D Periodic Table of the Elements

Broadly, the Periodic Table of Elements is a series of columns which corresponds to atomic weight and is organised by various properties.

However they all have one thing in common:
Their Magic Number is identical, and so irrelevant normally.

If every atom in existence has the same magic-number, then you have nothing to compare it to and nobody is paying attention to it.

But if someone finds a way to modify that fundamental constant, now you have a new kind of atom. One that shares atomic weight and the other properties of the original atom, but is distinct because it has a different Magic Number.

Abruptly you find that every element you already knew about can take on new properties because there was a whole swathe of behaviour locked away behind that magic number that simply never came up.

You could compare it to the different isotopes of Uranium perhaps.
Or you could call it a measure of how Magical your element is.

Answer 3

Nobody has ever asked what the one ring was made of, that could be only smolten in the heat of mount Doom, nor how could mithrill be so sturdy and yet Moria was carved by extracting it, so why nobody did ever think of using the mithrill extractor and so on.

When I read the Miserables I remember I got bored to death by the sections on the battle of Waterloo, and despite being myself a chem junkie, I would dread reading a story that goes so much into details as to give the count of how many patapontiums and spronglons each element has.

Stay high level, describe the materials you have and how they interact with each other without going into the nitty gritty details: we all learn about stone age, bronze age and iron age before having any clue of what nucleons and electrons are and how they mingle into the landscape of the periodic table.

Answer 4

I think you want simplicity, you also don't want too many magical elements (who the hell will remember more than like, 7?). So you don't want too many.

I also think your periodic table would do better to draw from ancient elemental theories, not modern chemistry. These, conveniently, had far fewer elements. Some images to whet the appetite will follow.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wuxing_(Chinese_philosophy)#/media/File:FiveElementsCycleBalanceImbalance_02_plain.svg

You can imagine putting together a similar kind of system with the magical elements that exist in your setting. Here is my quick and dirty example:

Lightning - Unstopable.

Liftstone - Immovable. Holds the world aloft. Formations in the sky can serve as platforms for aerial forts.

Mythril - strong, light

Sparkflint - incredibly sharp.

Whenever two consecutive elements in the cycle touch they combine to make the next on the list. So when lighting strikes liftstone it turns to Mythril. Stabbing a Mythril blade into liftstone makes them congeal into a shard of Sparkflint. Chipping a Mythril hammer against a sparkflint produces bolts of lightning (a common weapon).

Answer 5

Prime factorisation

How about taking integers (or even just primes) and assigning some sort of magic property to each? So e.g. 3 = transformability and 7 = fire

Every number has a prime factorisation, i.e. can be made by multiplying primes, or is itself a prime. 36 = 4 * 9 = 2 * 2 × 3 * 2.

If the atomic weight of an element has a factorisation with a prime factor, it has that factor's property. If it has lots of a prime factor then it has that property strongly. So pure Aluminium, with atomic weight mostly 27 = 3 * 3 * 3 = 3^3 is AMAZING for magical transformation (but probably unexceptional for any other type of magic.)

The nice things about this is:

1. If you allow ions and molecules to take on new magical properties from their total weight, then you get magical transformations that piggyback on known chemical reactions.

2. It's predictive and pretty easy to work out what will have what properties. A spreadsheet could spit out the magical properties of most chemical species.

3. The people in your stories can have as good or as bad an idea of the magic rules as you desire depending on their knowledge of a) chemistry, b) magic chemistry rules.

4. You can make house rules. Do ions count as integrated units, or as sums of their component elements, or both? Are there oddball exceptions?

5. You can assign arbitrary one off properties to non prime numbers to achieve things ad hoc.

6. It's SE Worldbuilding original. Unless by some miracle someone else has had the same idea, there's no copyright. Tweak it so you can have yours, though.

Answer 6

D&D Was never mentioned in the OP but when I ran my own world, I attempted to codify how magic worked. Use or adapt as however you see fit.

D&D used a form of alchemy I guess. Earth Air Fire Water. Plus Positive/Negative-Material. Each of these elements have their one plain/dimension where they exist in their pure forms. Also para-elemental planes where they exists in their impure forms. ex: in an overlapping circle diagram where air and water meet, this would be para-elemental mist.

The Positive and Negative Material Plane (PMT & NMP) is more or less Life/Death Good/Evil etc. Your alignment / disposition in life determines your interactions with these. As far as magical effects most can use either PMT OR NMT energy to achieve the desired effects, most often some of both. Healing or necromantic effects which should be evident. This PMP/NMP energy is used in as the "carrier wave" for all magic and the vast majority of the spells expended energy. A tiny amount is extracted from the caster and whatever components they sacrifice. And some is refunded to the caster as the spell compleets. Though still the user is drained, this drain is mitigated with age and experience. If all the energy needed to cast a even a simple spell were directly extracted even from the most accomplished mage, they would be reduced to a desiccated, crumbling, cold, dry husk.

What I did was assigned a rune to each plain / para-plane, and rune for unit of time, and a rune for 3 units of quantity/volume/mass. How these runes were combined defined the effects of the spell. That would be 32 elemental 2 material, and 4 more for measurements.

You could assign the elemental runes a numerical value. Even for positive traits odd for negative. Or any number of ways. The system, was given as a neutral view of a balanced magic ecosystem. Building outward on the positive and negative at the center. I can't imagine it being a periodic table such as we have but certainly could imagine it built out in some balance representative form.

Answer 7

Magitons: Magical Nuclear Particle : Not necessarily Magical, you can have any fictional particle in your nucleus. If they are magical, they give them magical properties or make them able to affected with magic while normal materials are immune to magic.

So you can have entirety separate periodic table of Magical variants of normal elements. Titanium + Magitons = Adamantite. Silver + Magitons = Mythril etc etc. Even magical isotopes, Adamantite with 21 Magitons vs 23 Magitons.

You essentially give properties to any element, transparent metal etc. You can also alloy them with other Magitons elements or with normal elements.Fuels with Magiton elements as components can have higher yields. Possibilities are endless

Just make sure mass of these magitons is much lower than protons, or they are very less (only 1-6 in any atom at max). Otherwise, atomic mass of your element will rapidly and your elements could run risk of nuclear instability and radioactivity as early as Silver or Barium

Answer 8

Fill the Gaps

Your new magical elements should go in the intersections of the real periodic table.

Not sure what this positioning represents about the properties of the elements. But you don't tell us anything about the properties to begin with.

All you say is your are designing a periodic table. The most important thing is it resembles the existing one. The best way to do this is attach it to the existing one.

Answer 9

Is your magic incantation based? If so, then the magical properties of otherwise mundane elements are based on their true names (in Latin, or whatever language your story is set in). Gematria is a well established, proven by the occult history way of attaching numerical values to words - and your magical properties will be tied to those numbers (if you want to keep the periodical table spirit, make the magical properties periodical with the period let's say 7, or several overlapping periods governing different aspects).

Answer 10

The periodic table could be extended into the third dimension so that subsequent layers into the page represent increasingly magical elements that share relationships with the conventional elements. Sort of like how elements get more noble as you move from left to right.

Doesn't necessarily need to be Euclidean either as it extends into the page (an element could perhaps be adjacent to multiple elements in the ajoining layers without being right next to them. That would reduce the number of elements. Or you could just have a lot of gaps in your table that are undiscovered.

Answer 11

I would suggest first taking a good look at some existing alternative periodic tables: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_periodic_tables

Theodor Benfey's version has a certain aesthetic appeal to me, as though it could sprout another lobe at any time.

On the other hand, Charles Janet's left-step periodic table seems to imply to my eye a lot of 'empty space' just begging to be filled up with something impossible.

Any of the radial ones should be just fine, I would think.

Answer 12

The thing about the periodic table of elements is that it sequentially covers all the possible ways that sub-atomic molecules can be joined together - so the shape of the periodic table of elements was known before most of the elements were verified to exist.

As has been mentioned prior, you cant out-science science so don't bother trying to justify the layout of your para-elemental table against protons and electrons (there is no space for that). My recommendation to the previous posts would be to make up 1 or 2 additional sub-atomic particles as a way to have another para table intersect the periodic table.

Protons and electrons have opposite charge and repulse each other? Well Gooftons are charged particles which are attracted to both Protons and electrons - kablaam, entire new intersection of the periodic table depending on the number of Goofton's attatched to a given atom.

Otherwise add variant neutrons which replace the regular ones in the atoms core which have strange effects like slowing the speed at which electrons spin around the nucleus or cause protons to hover slightly further away from each other.

Tldr, go look up some properties and relationships of atoms/ sub-atomic particles and state which ones your para-particles affect at the small scale - but dont bother justifying how that results in specific behaviour at the macro-scale.

Answer 13

Magic systems often rely on a cruder sense of materials than atomic elements. I think you may be getting stuck on the idea that magical elements need to somehow correspond with physical elements.

Instead of that, magical elements are orthogonal to physical elements and interact with matter depending on certain attributes of their molecular structures. These attributes could be things such as purity, resistance to oxidation, crystalline structure, charge polarity, electrical conductivity, thermal conductivity, heat capacity, state of matter, etc... For instance:

• The more regular a crystal structure is, the better it can be imbued with a particular magical element
• Materials with higher elemental purity and resistance to oxidation (e.g. gold) are able to quickly conduct the movement of some set of magical elements.
• Polar materials like water attract and repel certain pata-elements whereas nonpolar materials do the opposite.
• Pata-elements attracted to liquids are repelled by gases and conducted by solids. This could be used to create gradients of magic that could be used do do work, much like electricity (perhaps electricity is, itself, a pata-element)
• Noble gases attract the pure and neutral element, aether, and repel all others.

In addition, when magical elements react with one another, it transforms into a different element rather than forming a magical compound. For instance, if a pata-atom of electricity collides with a pata-atom of anima, you get two pata-atoms of phlogiston. Aether does not react with anything.

I very much agree with other answers that suggest a radial layout of an elemental table. Cycles and circles just feel naturally magical and appropriate for this system. The angular position might correspond with how the element interacts with different structures of matter, while the proximity to the center relates to material purity, with the center being the neutral aether. You could even have a little fun with traditionally magical numbers. Perhaps there are 3 elements in the inner ring, 7 elements in the middle ring, and 13 elements in the outer ring. Prime numbers make this interesting and perhaps a little awkward, but it helps to make it feel magical and mysterious.

Answer 14

Strangelets.

A strangelet is a hypothetical particle with up, down, and strange quarks. It works sort of like a proton or nucleon, though there are wild and unbelievable stories about it taking over the entire universe in a chain reaction. It also could be a sort of dark matter. Because we're looking to justify magic here, and I don't know much about the exotic particles that exist let alone the ones that don't, I'm not going to try to peer through the haze here, but if you're up for it there is much to research. Let's cut to the chase...

We're going to say that:

• strangelets exist as one single sort of nucleon-like particle, working like a proton or neutron, which can be introduced into existing elements like a neutron to make a "pata"-isotope.
• strangelets exist only because they are stabilized by the interaction with dark matter, which is a fast-moving "gas" that permeates all of space within a galaxy and makes up most of the mass of the universe, even if in any spot it is not very dense.
• dark matter actually consists mostly of spaceships, mixed with other remnants of ancient and powerful alien civilizations.
• the elements you make have a presence that, when suitably dense and organized, can channel energy and coordinate other phenomena from the dark matter part of the cosmos.
• without some ultra-sophisticated particle accelerator that people try to tell us will destroy the world, you can't make strangelets. Unless you have strangelets. So magic has smouldered on Earth in hidden communities or places that use magic to make magic, and nowhere else.
• the strangelets might also still decay at some rate, making them slightly radioactive and ensuring that most mundane environments don't have any trace contamination.