A geologist's periodic table

That big table of the elements on the wall never did much for you in geology school. That's because, Bruce Railsback says, in nature most of the elements occur as ions. The University of Georgia professor has devised an intricate and deeply sensible map of the elements by separating all the different charged species.

It's a poster included in the September Geology, and the article accompanying it helps a lot. Nonsubscribers looking at the poster on Railsback's site will need a good grounding in geochemistry to grasp its power without help. I can see this table serving as the nucleus of a full-fledged geochemistry course. Look up the journal at your nearest college library, if you don't subscribe already. Abstracts from Geology are publically viewable online: see it and others in the Journals & Articles list.