[r-t] Periodic table and chemical elements methods

[Rebecca Cox]

PJE
>I'm currently at a Chemistry conference and this has got me
>thinking...

>Surprise major methods have been named after all (I think) the ~110
>chemical elements.? I think most or all were devised by Tony Cox.
>Whilst a number of these element?methods are quiet neat (eg
>Tellurium, a &3-56.4-56-23-4-5-4-5), I'm very puzzled as to why the
>methods don't fit into a periodic table "plan", complete with
>associated trends, etc. This seems to me?that it would be (or would
>have been)?a much more elegant and preferable?approach.

The elements series of methods didn't start with a plan, the series just 
evolved as time went by.
The first method in the series, Zirconium S Major, was rung at Bristol 
Cathedral in 1979,
and so named because someone wnated a Z and Zirconium seemed a nice name
compared with a lot of obscure place names from remote parts of the world 
beginning with Z.
We then decided to ring all the rare gases, probably to get an X, and after 
than an alphabet of elements.
This was quite hard as there are no real element names beginning with J or 
Q.
However we rang Jod (the german word for Iodine, and Quicksilver, a name for 
mercury)
and then just continued filling in the gaps till we'd rung all the names I 
could find except
for some of the unnil...ium, unun...ium names which were so similar and 
anyway only temporary place holders.
We eventually rang methods named after all the official element names
and a good number of the old names, alternative names and the names from 
which the
symbols were derived (e.g.,, Niton, Columbium, Kalium, etc) and even
resorted to some names which should have been used but hadn't been
(Saturium, Jupitium, Marsium, etc following the sequence Plutonium, 
Neptunium, Uranium, ...).
Finally we also rang a few fictional elements Elisabethium, Vallium, Jovium
and recently Bolonium. While there was no plan to make the methods
in the same parts of the periodic table have similar features, there is
some significance is a few of the names. Tin has falseness SN, phosphorus
was so named because we'd lost a previous peal of the method
because the tenor ringer had drunk too much tea and needed a pee.
Mostly the methods were chosen to be suitable for the bands we
had at the time and because they had some interesting features:
musical possibilities, interesting line, obscure falseness etc.

Looking back now, I think the methods and compositions rung
then (mainly 15-nearly 30 years ago) have generally stood the test of time
well and there should still be something to interest most people
(apart from those who only ring Cambridge above) amongst this series.

Tony