00.00 – 02.01
What is the world made of? The discovery of the periodic table of elements; beginning with the creation of the most common elements in stars such as the Sun, which is made up mainly of hydrogen. The importance of exploding stars – supernovas – to the creation of new elements.

02.02 – 06.10
The activities of the alchemists and their discovery of new elements, for example, phosphorous.

06.11 – 07.42
The work of Robert Boyle and the beginnings of a more scientific approach based on experiments in the search for new elements. It was Robert Boyle who first defined an element – ‘Elements can combine together to form compounds but they cannot be separated into simpler substances’. Some of the early elements that were discovered in the seventeenth century were: Silicon (Si); Bismuth (Bi); Sulphur (S); Iodine (I); Bromine (Br); Chlorine (Cl). The expansion of knowledge about the elements did not take place until the beginning of the nineteenth century with the discovery of electricity.

07.43 – 10.26
In 1807, Humphrey Davy extracted Sodium by passing a strong current of electricity through caustic soda – the experiment is reconstructed. Davy prepared four new elements using electrolysis – Potassium, Sodium, Barium and Strontium. The discovery of other elements by nineteenth century scientists. By the middle of the century, over 60 elements were known but scientists began to wonder if there was a pattern in the findings, eg the alkaline metals and the halogens. There were clearly patterns emerging but no one could put together a single pattern that linked all the elements together.

10.27 – 17.01
Dmitri Mendeleev, a Russian, studied everything that was known about the elements and looked for patterns in their properties. He grouped the known 63 elements in families based on their properties and on their increasing atomic weight. He also made the critical realisation that there were some elements that had not yet been discovered. This breakthrough enabled him to make predictions about the missing elements that had not been discovered. It was several years before some of these elements were identified but Mendeleev’s predictions about their properties were extremely accurate. This pattern of elements became known as The Periodic Table. It is effectively a list of ingredients for the Universe.

17.02 – end
The modern periodic table. Discoveries made since Mendeleev’s time – the structure of the atom and the possibility that the Universe may not bemade of atoms at all but of ‘Dark Matter’.