An element at random
Every element of the periodic table is on this wheel, with its symbol in brackets, and each group has its own colour – the colours a printed periodic table uses. Press SPIN!:
The ten groups
The wheel opens with the everyday part of the table: the alkali and alkaline earth metals, the other metals, the metalloids, the nonmetals, the halogens and the noble gases. The transition metals, the lanthanides and the actinides are off, because 118 labels on one circle cannot be read. Click a group to put it on:
Open a group to see what is in it and untick what a lesson does not need – the first twenty elements only, for example:
In the chemistry lesson
- Revision: spin, and the student says the symbol, the group and one use.
- Homework roulette – everybody writes about the element the wheel gives them.
- A quick starter: spin five times and put the five elements in order of atomic number.
- Learning symbols: spin and name the element from the symbol before you read the label.
- Picking which element the class studies next.
Every element once
Tick Take the winner off the wheel under Options and each element leaves as it is drawn, so a class of thirty gets thirty different ones:
Past winners keeps them in the order they came up: