Buffy is so old there were only 103 named elements, we’re at 118 now. (Yes I pause every show that has a periodic table to see if its period accurate)
Replies
Because that was the only factual error in the show?
jul 27, 2025, 1:59 pm • 0 0 • view
It’s not an error, it’s accurate
jul 27, 2025, 2:00 pm • 4 0 • view
Fair point 😀
jul 27, 2025, 2:05 pm • 0 0 • view
My wife's response: "You should figure out if there were more than 103 at time of taping to determine if they were actually just trying to communicate to an audience that would know better that Sunnydale High is actually underfunded since the mayor is a demon and wants just to eat the class"
jul 27, 2025, 5:34 pm • 8 0 • view
Buffy and a periodic table. Right up my street. Is that Amy?
jul 27, 2025, 8:09 pm • 0 0 • view
It is, as played by Elizabeth Anne Allen. Amy had an interesting character development on Buffy - first as a victim, then an ally, then an antagonist, and finally a full on enemy.
jul 27, 2025, 9:24 pm • 2 0 • view
Thank you for your service. There is always a panic when periods are missing.
jul 27, 2025, 4:56 pm • 1 0 • view
The only explanation is that the influence of the Hellmouth prevents some elements from forming and thus this table is perfectly accurate. Otherwise it would mean I'm getting old, which is impossible.
aug 5, 2025, 9:06 am • 0 0 • view
One of the few things I remember from high school classrooms. I still would have though 103 was accurate because things stick like that. Look even if we were taught incomplete science, we at least got taught it without being told it's from Satan.
jul 27, 2025, 3:59 pm • 0 0 • view
Might just be current day but in a state where all the woke elements have been banned from schools.
jul 27, 2025, 3:00 pm • 0 0 • view
I'm so old, this is the PE table I had in my classroom
jul 27, 2025, 1:35 pm • 0 0 • view
This is something that some folk don't know about Buffy - it was a mid-season replacement, season 1 is only 12 episodes. It was filmed in 1996 and aired in 1997, so in this episode the cheerleader trials were shown as being for 1996, so it was already anachronistic by the time it went out.
jul 27, 2025, 9:19 pm • 1 0 • view
You MUST be friends with Phil Plait.
jul 28, 2025, 3:52 am • 0 0 • view
Am I going to haul this #FunFact out every time I see Buffy from now on? Yes, yes I am.
jul 27, 2025, 1:47 pm • 4 0 • view
we must also consider that schools don't update these posters as frequently as they, perhaps, should
jul 27, 2025, 2:48 pm • 4 0 • view
I can confirm! Especially for classrooms that are not teaching chemistry. My bio, earth sci, physics, and env sci courses over the years did just fine without those fancy, schmancy new elements! Yes, I would add the new elements with post it notes.
jul 27, 2025, 4:32 pm • 1 0 • view
Just verified my age by instantly thinking of Mike Rutherford with a double-neck guitar instead of the eponymous Kiwi baryon-botherer.
jul 27, 2025, 10:03 am • 10 0 • view
I just verified my age by understanding your reference. 🤣
jul 27, 2025, 1:11 pm • 4 0 • view
I am *slightly* younger than Supper's Ready but only slightly!
jul 27, 2025, 2:16 pm • 1 0 • view
www.youtube.com/watch?v=U2cf... Updated version: www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qd0a...
jul 27, 2025, 3:46 pm • 2 0 • view
My son used to be obsessed with the periodic table when he was in elementary school. He used to wear t-shirts with the table on them (not fandom-based cutesy tables, but the legit table).
jul 27, 2025, 1:54 pm • 1 0 • view
There were 106 when I was made to learn the whole table in school. I never did memorise more than the first 10 or so lol
jul 27, 2025, 6:16 pm • 0 0 • view
I am so old that Jupiter only had 9 moons when I learned about the solar system. Imagine my surprise when my kids started learning about the solar system.
jul 27, 2025, 4:15 pm • 0 0 • view
Worth considering: while the periodic table in a school may be periodically accurate in regarding the science at the time, it may not be periodically accurate regarding the periodic tables hanging in chronically underfunded schools at the time
jul 28, 2025, 1:08 pm • 1 0 • view
How many are natural and how many only synthesised using radiation? Is the proportion still about 90% 'natural'?
jul 27, 2025, 10:39 am • 1 0 • view
About 90-94 elements occur naturally. So around the 80% mark now.
jul 27, 2025, 10:41 am • 11 0 • view
"period accurate," lol
jul 27, 2025, 5:26 pm • 0 0 • view
Talk about carbon dating
jul 27, 2025, 1:22 pm • 4 0 • view
Lawrencium is my go-to answer in the chemistry rounds on Pointless because it was last in the table when I was at school
jul 27, 2025, 1:20 pm • 0 0 • view
bsky.app/profile/xkcd...
jul 27, 2025, 11:23 pm • 16 1 • view
synthetic 👏 elements 👏 are 👏 not 👏 real 👏 elements 👏
jul 27, 2025, 11:53 am • 1 0 • view
Plutonium is gonna "not a real element" your whole town away if you disrespect it like that!
jul 28, 2025, 10:33 am • 1 0 • view
Sir. This post is deeply offensive.
jul 27, 2025, 11:48 am • 9 0 • view
But it's a school, those are always way out of date. My 80s primary school had one from the 40s, everything past Uranium was blank.
jul 27, 2025, 12:09 pm • 3 0 • view
If it's from the forties, uranium is also in the wrong position
jul 28, 2025, 10:34 am • 1 0 • view
Oh probably. We had 'science' textbooks that had 3 exclusive states of matter: dead, alive or never-alive. Viruses were alive, rocks were never-alive, etc. It wasn't a good school, it got shut down while my younger sister was still there.
jul 28, 2025, 3:14 pm • 2 0 • view
Not knowing that Actinoides are analogous to Lanthanoides is one of the reasons why it took so long to discover fission once the neutron was discovered...
jul 28, 2025, 3:55 pm • 0 0 • view
So it was correct for that period though you're saying?
jul 28, 2025, 2:55 pm • 0 0 • view
It’s not quite up to date, but I’d give them a pass on it. Element 103, lawrencium, had been confirmed and added but it was also disputed and would be reconfirmed in 1997 after the show. So it may be a pre-1971 table, but I’d say it’s close enough to correct.
jul 28, 2025, 3:20 pm • 1 0 • view
#Archeology #CarbonDating
jul 27, 2025, 1:41 pm • 0 0 • view
jul 27, 2025, 11:17 am • 5 0 • view
You're living on the edge
jul 27, 2025, 9:06 pm • 0 0 • view
I look forward to the day they finally add the element of surprise.
jul 27, 2025, 10:04 am • 23 0 • view
These are the only ones of which the news has come to Sunnydale...
jul 27, 2025, 11:54 am • 56 1 • view
… there may be many others but we’ve not received the email
jul 27, 2025, 12:01 pm • 48 0 • view
Excellent.
jul 27, 2025, 12:09 pm • 8 0 • view
🤝
jul 27, 2025, 4:54 pm • 3 0 • view
I got an uneasy feeling too when I heard this distressing news.
jul 27, 2025, 5:54 pm • 2 0 • view
"If, after hearing my songs, just one human being is inspired to say something nasty to a friend, or perhaps to strike a loved one, it will all have been worth the while."
jul 28, 2025, 9:13 pm • 3 0 • view
I do the same thing with maps. Particularly of Europe. I try to see if the countries match the period of the film or tv show. Yugoslavia or Balkan states is a good marker.
jul 28, 2025, 1:59 am • 5 0 • view
Reminds me of this excellent cartoon xkcd.com/1688/
jul 28, 2025, 1:47 pm • 1 0 • view
Love it! “How many Germanys are there?”
jul 28, 2025, 2:53 pm • 1 0 • view
But wouldn't it also be accurate for schools to have an outdated periodic table?
jul 27, 2025, 10:36 am • 36 0 • view
It's modestly outdated - Rutherfordium didn't get its formal name until 1997, but the lack of elements 108+ being there at all suggests it's probably from the early 80s.
jul 27, 2025, 12:31 pm • 4 0 • view
A little outdated is fine, 103 elements puts that table as being from the 60s or 70s.
jul 27, 2025, 3:42 pm • 2 0 • view
Outdated is fine, ones from the future are (usually) not.
jul 27, 2025, 11:25 am • 33 0 • view
Horrifying factoid – the entire first season of Buffy is now closer in time to the Apollo 11 Moon landing than it is to today.
jul 27, 2025, 10:22 pm • 11 0 • view
Horrifying indeed😱
jul 27, 2025, 10:34 pm • 0 0 • view
Why would you do this to us!
jul 28, 2025, 2:53 am • 3 0 • view
15 elements we were doing perfectly well without! What are these new-fangled ones then? Instagrammium? Tesloid? Trumpanium? 🙄
jul 27, 2025, 11:01 am • 10 0 • view
Well, Ununoctium, that's me. And BS would absolutely not be the same without me Sir.
jul 27, 2025, 11:12 am • 8 0 • view
I'm holding out for Kvetchtonium.
jul 28, 2025, 10:58 am • 2 0 • view
I'm not the rarest, but I'm the latest ^^ When is this new guest expected ? ^^
jul 28, 2025, 11:18 am • 2 0 • view
I wouldn't say I do this with EVERY show, but I'll admit that I've done it...periodically.
jul 27, 2025, 3:20 pm • 17 0 • view
That just means, I'd understand chemistry even less now.
jul 27, 2025, 10:11 am • 5 0 • view
Chemistry-wise the only thing you have to know about the new elements is that it's not really possible to do chemistry with them. They are created in infinitesimal quantities that immediately disintegrate.
jul 27, 2025, 7:48 pm • 5 0 • view
How do you know the school system wasn’t just under funded and they didn’t update it yet? I think the writers were doing this on purpose to expose societal priorities.
jul 27, 2025, 10:33 pm • 0 0 • view
I’m saying it’s accurate. There were only 103 named element then. It’s not stylistic choice. Additional elements wouldn’t be added for another year.
jul 27, 2025, 10:38 pm • 3 0 • view
I was not being serious
jul 28, 2025, 12:38 am • 0 0 • view
Some of those elements, of course, existed for only the tiniest fractions of a second which is still longer than any suggestions of Wheedon being involved in the reboot have lasted.
jul 27, 2025, 10:39 am • 55 0 • view
Will we ever get to see the mooted *reboot*? Will we ever want to?
jul 27, 2025, 11:55 am • 3 0 • view
They have been announcing casting lately, so it's on the way.
jul 27, 2025, 1:17 pm • 1 0 • view
Modified rapture.
jul 27, 2025, 1:19 pm • 0 0 • view
Second reboot.
jul 27, 2025, 1:03 pm • 26 0 • view
”I don’t think he knows about second reboot, Pip.”
jul 27, 2025, 2:59 pm • 14 0 • view
lmao
jul 27, 2025, 10:56 am • 3 1 • view
There are probably high schools with outdated periodic tables still up.
jul 27, 2025, 7:07 pm • 0 0 • view
While not an image of the table but somehow related given Tom passed recently. youtu.be/AcS3NOQnsQM?...
jul 28, 2025, 6:15 am • 2 0 • view
This means there are 15 new elements since I took high school chemistry, and I both hate that and think it’s a perfect illustration of why we all need to keep learning even after we’re out of school.
jul 27, 2025, 3:33 pm • 6 0 • view
You are a geek of the highest order and I love it!! 🤓
jul 27, 2025, 6:56 pm • 4 0 • view
Elementary, my dear doctor!
jul 27, 2025, 2:53 pm • 5 0 • view
Do you track them in a spreadsheet - do you have a periodic table period table?
jul 27, 2025, 1:27 pm • 2 0 • view
I have many periodic table spreadsheets 😅
jul 27, 2025, 1:28 pm • 4 0 • view
Stranger sliding in to applaud and appreciate this hobby. The pedantic nerd in me salutes the pedantic nerd in you.
jul 27, 2025, 6:53 pm • 7 0 • view
If I could change the periodic table, I would put uranium and iodine together.
jul 27, 2025, 4:25 pm • 0 0 • view
i'm fvcking methuselah
jul 28, 2025, 1:44 am • 0 0 • view
👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻❤️
jul 27, 2025, 9:38 pm • 0 0 • view
Honestly, the poster where I went was that one. The teacher was that old. Just didn't update it.
jul 27, 2025, 1:02 pm • 2 0 • view
Life is Strange used the post 2016 table for a game set in 2010. It's kinda impressive that they got this wrong, IUPAC updated the table while they were working on the game.
jul 28, 2025, 12:27 pm • 2 0 • view
Also, if we are being accurate, it is likely a school could be using an old table.
jul 27, 2025, 3:01 pm • 1 0 • view
One of the weird things about being in high school in the early 90s is that a lot of our school's outdated world maps became relevant again.
jul 27, 2025, 6:25 pm • 0 0 • view
I’d say it’s early 80s but it’s pretty up to date.
jul 27, 2025, 3:02 pm • 0 0 • view
I only pause those shows to see if they are correct.... periodically.
jul 27, 2025, 2:59 pm • 0 0 • view
It is a thankless job, but someone has to do it.
jul 27, 2025, 4:38 pm • 1 0 • view
my husband spotted this framed table in a powerplant lab (unused for a while) at his job about 4 years ago. 103 elements!
jul 27, 2025, 4:43 pm • 5 0 • view
You'd have to open the character's iPhone app now, though.
jul 27, 2025, 4:13 pm • 0 0 • view
As Tom Lehrer sang: And chlorine, carbon, cobalt, copper, tungsten, tin and sodium These are the only ones of which the news has come to Harvard And there may be many others but they haven't been discovered
jul 27, 2025, 5:03 pm • 1 0 • view
I absolutely love the geekery in this. Have you seen series or films where the table was inaccurate? Do you name and shame them?
jul 27, 2025, 9:48 am • 25 0 • view
ditto.
jul 27, 2025, 9:58 am • 5 0 • view
A fav inaccurate one is Stranger Things, it’s set in 1983 but has Livermorium which was discovered in 2000 and added officially to the table in 2012
jul 27, 2025, 10:17 am • 95 12 • view
Brilliant!!
jul 27, 2025, 12:20 pm • 1 0 • view
Hmmph, they should have used the money they spent on getting the kerning in the intro right to get this right instead.
jul 27, 2025, 1:07 pm • 2 1 • view
I lived in Livermore in the 90s. Did not know this.
jul 27, 2025, 12:47 pm • 2 0 • view
I recognise the expertise here, but some of us were still arguing with colleagues that we should spell sulfur with an F, not because of some imagined US cultural imperialism, but because that's what the IUPAC globally agreed decades ago 🥴
jul 27, 2025, 11:39 am • 12 0 • view
Oh really!
jul 27, 2025, 12:22 pm • 2 0 • view
Ha
jul 28, 2025, 5:50 am • 1 0 • view
I feel very… dumb at this moment. 😉😂
jul 27, 2025, 6:20 pm • 1 0 • view
Thank you for your service, Jamie.
jul 27, 2025, 2:35 pm • 1 0 • view
So, what approximately is the half-life of a periodic table? Seems critical to know if we're doing radiometric dating; or in this case TVmetric?
jul 27, 2025, 10:11 pm • 2 0 • view
I love this level of Geekery so much!!!
jul 27, 2025, 12:04 pm • 4 0 • view
Buffy film or the TV show?
jul 27, 2025, 1:38 pm • 0 0 • view
jul 28, 2025, 10:25 am • 2 0 • view
My mom was a chem teacher and would have LOVED this
jul 27, 2025, 12:34 pm • 4 0 • view
A man needs a hobby
jul 27, 2025, 2:56 pm • 6 0 • view
A compilation showing several of these screenshots with info on year of production and year of the period table would actually be awesome
jul 27, 2025, 9:59 am • 14 0 • view
hah! Buffy came back, "not right".
jul 27, 2025, 5:59 pm • 0 0 • view
@caulimovirus.bsky.social I suspect you might have to update your singing from med school.
jul 28, 2025, 12:00 am • 1 0 • view
Can you explain this to me please? My understanding from school was we knew all the elements, we just hadn't discovered them all.
jul 27, 2025, 1:15 pm • 0 0 • view
There are 90 odd elements that occur naturally and all have been discovered. The rest are artificially created. Elements are only allowed on the table when it’s been externally verified that they have been observed. So we add a new element at a rate of about 1 every 2 years.
jul 27, 2025, 1:19 pm • 7 0 • view
Thanks, very interesting.
jul 27, 2025, 1:22 pm • 1 0 • view
THIS is how I learn that the periodic table CHANGES??
jul 27, 2025, 3:39 pm • 1 0 • view
Neeeeeeeerrrrrrd ❤️
jul 28, 2025, 2:37 am • 1 0 • view
was waiting for you to say one of the elements was named after Buffy
jul 27, 2025, 3:44 pm • 9 0 • view
Buffy came out in 1997 and we would have had 112 then, right? Probably just had an old table.
jul 27, 2025, 12:57 pm • 5 0 • view
According to Wikipedia 103 when show started in 1997. 6 elements added DURING show's run (upto 2003) So while Buffy started with 103 named elements; elements 104–106 (Rutherfordium, Dubnium, Seaborgium) & 107–112 were in various stages of discovery, naming / recognition. bsky.app/profile/gilg...
jul 27, 2025, 2:06 pm • 1 0 • view
But also according to wikipedia, they were up to Hassium in 1997...
jul 28, 2025, 4:32 am • 1 0 • view
"Subject to confirmation by the union's members at a meeting in Geneva next August [1997], these will be the names of the six new elements: Element 104, Rutherfordium (symbol Rf); ... Element 108, Hassium (symbol Hs), bol Mt)."
jul 28, 2025, 4:53 am • 1 1 • view
Really thank you finding the actual article from 1997. I didn't know it was available online.
jul 28, 2025, 5:01 am • 1 0 • view
Meitnerium (Mt), Hassium (Hs) & Bohrium (Bh) were officially recognized in 1997 but synthesised earlier: 82, 84 & 76 respectively, giving us '106' identified elements. My assumption is that set designers used the table that was most accessibly up-to-date for them. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hassium
jul 28, 2025, 4:57 am • 1 0 • view
Chemists vs Art Directors. Fight.
jul 27, 2025, 1:17 pm • 5 0 • view
This is the content I come online to find.
jul 27, 2025, 11:58 pm • 2 0 • view
I LOVE noticing the background PSAs and posters in Buffy… “Cyber Space”
jul 27, 2025, 5:04 pm • 0 0 • view
That show is so old, American schools taught science...
jul 27, 2025, 12:50 pm • 126 0 • view
Now they're more like that episode where the parents tried to burn their kids alive for being smart and gay... I mean for being witches
jul 27, 2025, 1:30 pm • 43 0 • view
But Buffy isn't gay — unless you count the "just good friends" she had with Faith before Faith turned evil...
jul 28, 2025, 10:37 am • 0 0 • view
Nah, the show's so up to date that the school is broke enough it can't afford a modern periodic table.
jul 27, 2025, 3:59 pm • 1 0 • view
wait have they managed to name ununoctium finally?
jul 27, 2025, 3:46 pm • 2 0 • view
Don't make me feel so old!
jul 27, 2025, 5:45 pm • 3 0 • view
My girl Amy
jul 28, 2025, 5:22 pm • 0 0 • view
👏🏻👏🏻
jul 28, 2025, 6:15 pm • 0 0 • view
😹💜
jul 27, 2025, 12:04 pm • 1 0 • view
Running through this show for the first time. On s6.
jul 27, 2025, 1:28 pm • 1 0 • view
Same, but on S1. I’ll see how far I get 😅
jul 27, 2025, 1:29 pm • 2 0 • view
It gets better after season 1
jul 28, 2025, 10:38 am • 2 0 • view
If the poster ca 1997 was up to date it should have had more. But i makes sense that it would be a few years old. That school had bigger issues then outdated learning supplies.
jul 27, 2025, 10:49 pm • 11 0 • view
I am not sure the school inspectors would take that as an excuse. If they survived their visit.
jul 28, 2025, 11:53 pm • 0 0 • view
102 in here open.spotify.com/track/3lOqnA...
jul 27, 2025, 10:47 pm • 2 0 • view
I'm so old the first Periodic Table I came to know only went up to Californium.
jul 27, 2025, 9:58 pm • 0 0 • view
Do you do this…periodically?
jul 28, 2025, 10:13 pm • 0 0 • view
“Evolution” had 109
jul 27, 2025, 1:37 pm • 0 0 • view
Oh, some occasional new additions? I guess over the last thirty years there have been....periodic updates
jul 27, 2025, 3:33 pm • 5 0 • view
Well done.
jul 27, 2025, 4:16 pm • 1 0 • view
It's important to have a hobby and I am big fan of the heavily personalized ones.
jul 27, 2025, 2:44 pm • 1 0 • view
Our high school learning charts were all a minimum of 15 years old. Buffy’s being accurate to the year she was in suggests the school was as upper-middle-class as it the kids’ wardrobes suggested.
jul 27, 2025, 10:07 am • 52 1 • view
This is from season 1, episode 3, filmed in 1996. It could have had element 111 on it and still be accurate for the period. 103 was first detected in the sixties.
jul 27, 2025, 12:38 pm • 12 0 • view
Thought the discovers had been made they weren’t recognised on the table by iupac until 1997.
jul 27, 2025, 12:45 pm • 8 0 • view
I believe it was there since 1971, but they only settled the dispute about who actually discovered it in ‘97?
jul 27, 2025, 3:44 pm • 4 0 • view
I suspect that scene demonstrates the age of their prop house - there were more 6d elements discovered and named when Buffy was filmed. That said, we had a lot of old lecture rooms with similarly out of date tables.
jul 27, 2025, 2:01 pm • 1 0 • view
Not sure why Bohrium isn’t there but I think that’s the only error. It would change pretty radically 18 months later though.
jul 27, 2025, 2:06 pm • 0 0 • view
Given when the show was filmed, I would be impressed if element 118 appeared but then disappeared in later episodes. And not from radiative decay.
jul 27, 2025, 3:31 pm • 1 0 • view
You could say its period accurate.
jul 27, 2025, 1:49 pm • 1 0 • view
@cycling1972.bsky.social
jul 27, 2025, 10:23 am • 1 0 • view
Tom Lehrer (RIP) sings them all. All there were… youtu.be/AcS3NOQnsQM?...
jul 28, 2025, 3:15 pm • 0 0 • view
Boy I hope somebody got fired for that blunder.
jul 27, 2025, 10:50 pm • 9 0 • view
I loved spotting this. Nothing better than spotting a nerdy flaw.
jul 27, 2025, 3:03 pm • 55 0 • view
Another thing was the lights on their bikes. While battery powered lights did exist back then, it would be unlikely all the kids would have them, they’d probably have a “dynamo” or “bottle generator”powering their lights.
jul 27, 2025, 5:39 pm • 35 0 • view
bringing back memory i had forgotten i possessed wow
jul 27, 2025, 5:44 pm • 9 0 • view
That’s interesting, hadn’t thought about it. Most shows set in the past use flashlights that are too bright if filmed now
jul 27, 2025, 5:41 pm • 7 0 • view
This one is a weird anachronism that isn't even an anachronism, so much as it is way harder to film low-light convincingly, now that our cameras are so much better at low-light filming. When your base ISO is, I dunno, 800, and the film stock from the time was 120, or whatever,
jul 28, 2025, 5:12 am • 1 0 • view
all of the toy incandescent tungsten bulbs on C (or D) batteries are going to look like Mag lights. On the upside, it allows forest scenes to be sufficiently lit, without burning copious amounts of diesel, and without the same degree of fire hazard.
jul 28, 2025, 5:12 am • 1 0 • view
For awhile I was convinced this was some sort of clue 😬
jul 28, 2025, 4:36 am • 17 0 • view
Many years ago I spent long nights thinking that the human population numbers in the opening credits of the third season or so of Battlestar Galactica would, when compared, yield the identity of the final cylons. So I know your pain.
jul 28, 2025, 4:54 am • 11 0 • view
Wow I had no idea this number had changed since I was in high school. Thank you.
jul 27, 2025, 10:02 pm • 0 0 • view
Humans have added roughly (very roughly) one element every two years over the past 150 years.
jul 27, 2025, 10:03 pm • 2 0 • view
Very cool to know that. I basically understood that the ones at the end/edge (?) were recent and sort of experimental or lab-based (versus something you find in the forest) but I didn't leave school with a sense of "watch this space, there will always be more" - maybe I'd seen once or twice?
jul 27, 2025, 11:29 pm • 0 0 • view
I read Dava Sobel's book on Dr. Mme. Marie Sklodowska Curie and seeing the new elements be noted was an absolutely joy.
jul 28, 2025, 4:33 am • 2 0 • view
No, we are Making America Great Again & we only had 103 elements when I America was last great, so there you have it!
jul 27, 2025, 12:14 pm • 0 0 • view
my dad was a chemistry enthusiast so had his periodic chart from uni mounted in the house, and my mum would carefully letter in the new elements as they were discovered in the empty boxes of the 7th row
jul 27, 2025, 11:25 am • 61 0 • view
That’s so sweet. ❤️
jul 27, 2025, 11:29 am • 11 0 • view
To be fair: my prior school had a seriously old-school periodic table (the ones that rolled down like a projector screen) and we’d paste on new elements as they came along. For us, it was a was good way to show science is always developing.😎 Peace!
jul 27, 2025, 11:29 am • 11 0 • view
LetterKenny is an amazingly funny show, and i say that as an irishman married to a mainer from the u.s. She confirmed, yep thats actually how it is. 😅
jul 27, 2025, 12:26 pm • 4 0 • view
118 is such a nice round number for it too. Completely fills out the space on the bottom right. I remember the one in my classroom going that far in the 2010s, but with only provisional names because nobody had synthesised them yet.
jul 27, 2025, 3:23 pm • 2 0 • view
jul 27, 2025, 6:43 pm • 31 0 • view
buffying
jul 27, 2025, 8:27 pm • 12 0 • view
Also, since this is a post Prop 13 public high school, they probably couldn't afford to update the poster.
jul 27, 2025, 11:53 pm • 0 0 • view
@cynthia-1960.bsky.social, who introduced me to BtVS and is a chemist, needs to see this.
jul 27, 2025, 11:52 pm • 2 0 • view
I think we were well past 103 elements by 1997, when Buffy premiered. Obviously Principal Snyder was too stingy to pay for updated periodic tables. (I too nitpick period accuracy on TV shows. My particular obsession is shows set in the 80s which assume desktop computer were common.)
jul 27, 2025, 12:54 pm • 24 0 • view
Hey, blame where blame is due. Principal Flutie was still principal during this episode. He doesn't get eaten until episode 6.
jul 27, 2025, 7:49 pm • 4 0 • view
Also it was filmed in 1996 and this episode shows the cheerleader trials as being for the 1996 academic year. Buffy season 1 was a 12-episode half-length season aired as a midseason replacement starting in early 1997. There are one or two other details which reveal it as 1996 if you can spot them
jul 27, 2025, 9:22 pm • 1 0 • view
Good Lord, I'd completely forgotten about Flutie. I only did one watch of Season 1, and that was a *long* time ago. If I were a bit more of a fan, I'd prepare a list of all the absurd ways the weird deaths of characters are explained away ("Wild dogs got into his office").
jul 27, 2025, 8:40 pm • 4 0 • view
My TV toxic trait is the opposite, watching old things and noticing how the world has changed based on little details like this. In an early X-Files episode, Scully drags an huge 80s desktop computer with her on mission, it takes up the entire trunk of the car, and Mulder thinks it’s weird.
jul 27, 2025, 3:37 pm • 2 0 • view
What toxic trait? THE HISTORICAL MISREPRESENTATION OF TECHNOLOGY ON TV MUST STOP!
jul 27, 2025, 4:19 pm • 1 0 • view
He was more focused on profits.
jul 27, 2025, 4:37 pm • 0 0 • view
Yup. Copernicum (112) was first synthesized in 1996, but not named until 2009.
jul 27, 2025, 6:36 pm • 0 0 • view
The claim that it *had* been synthesized wasn't recognized until 2009. So it wouldn't have been on any periodic tables before Sunnydale was destroyed in 2003.
jul 27, 2025, 7:24 pm • 2 0 • view
The school districts were too stingy to pay for updated science posters... but we NEED a new football stadium, peak 1990s
jul 27, 2025, 1:48 pm • 14 0 • view
Well, the reality is that this was the prop that happened to be in the 20th Century warehouse. But it's more fun to blame it on one of my favorite TV villains, as played by one of my favorite TV actors.
jul 27, 2025, 2:52 pm • 8 0 • view
But this episode is from the first season, when the school was under Principal Flutie
aug 5, 2025, 9:05 am • 0 0 • view
That's peak ALWAYS though
jul 28, 2025, 1:54 pm • 0 0 • view
jul 27, 2025, 2:57 pm • 3 0 • view
Buffy: 1997 Lawrencium: 1961 Public schools using out-of-date instructional material: always and forever An up-to-date chart would have included copernicum 112, though it wasn't named that until 2009. (h/t Wikipedia)
jul 27, 2025, 6:32 pm • 9 0 • view
I came here to say this but with leas detail. Good work.
jul 27, 2025, 8:07 pm • 1 0 • view
How many more in the same amount of time post 118? I predict 4
jul 31, 2025, 1:12 pm • 0 0 • view
Good question. The rate will be slower for sure. 1997 was a bonanza for elements getting added. And we need to go on to a whole new period now.
jul 31, 2025, 1:31 pm • 1 0 • view
I'll be deep in the cold ground before I recognise Missouri Wait
jul 27, 2025, 11:28 am • 18 1 • view
... talking of which, I only discovered within the past half hour that Tom Lehrer added an extra verse to The Elements for 103-118, just five years ago: tomlehrersongs.com/the-elements/
jul 28, 2025, 3:15 pm • 10 5 • view
jul 27, 2025, 10:31 am • 6 0 • view
Cool.
jul 28, 2025, 12:21 pm • 0 0 • view
That’s the movie isn’t it?
jul 27, 2025, 12:48 pm • 0 0 • view
It’s season 1 episode 3, the woman is the witch that wants to be a cheerleader
jul 27, 2025, 12:49 pm • 4 0 • view
Ah! Thanks!
jul 27, 2025, 12:57 pm • 1 0 • view
I was gonna say "this doesn't look like SMG"
jul 28, 2025, 10:35 am • 1 0 • view
This reminds me of the guy that can date when a globe is made by looking at what countries were called.
jul 27, 2025, 2:31 pm • 3 0 • view
We love you for this, Jamie!
jul 27, 2025, 6:39 pm • 1 0 • view
"Period accurate"
jul 27, 2025, 10:57 pm • 0 0 • view
Now, this level of spoterism is something I can appreciate.
jul 27, 2025, 4:18 pm • 0 0 • view
"Period" accurate? I see what you did there.
jul 27, 2025, 3:11 pm • 5 0 • view
Elements 103 to 118 added by Tom Lehrer in 2020 Copernicium, meitnerium, nihonium, moscovium, Rutherfordiuim, seaborgium, roentgenium, flerovium, Darmstadtium, lawrencium, oganesson, livermoriuim, And tennessine and hassium and dubnium and bohrium. tomlehrersongs.com/the-elements/
jul 27, 2025, 8:09 pm • 5 2 • view
Element 104 was still called kurchatovium when I first heard about it...
jul 27, 2025, 9:50 pm • 1 0 • view
In 1993 I was doing a summer internship at GSI in Darmstadt, Germany, and witnessed the naming party for elements 107 to 109. Even number 110 was recognized by the IUPAC before filming for Buffy started in 1995. So, they could have been a little bit more up to date …
jul 27, 2025, 8:20 pm • 1 0 • view
It might have been widely accepted, but wasn’t official until 1997 old.iupac.org/reports/1997... Approval of 110 wasn’t until 2003
jul 27, 2025, 8:34 pm • 2 0 • view
Plus, from my recollection of 90s high school, it would be more realistic for them to still be using a periodic table poster printed some time in the 1960s or 70s.
jul 27, 2025, 9:50 pm • 1 0 • view
Brilliant
jul 27, 2025, 1:52 pm • 0 0 • view
Are they periodically wrong?
jul 27, 2025, 8:27 pm • 1 0 • view
whats the tally between tom lehrer and now? I think i once heard it was in the 20s, but now im wondering if that is super low.
jul 27, 2025, 11:43 pm • 0 0 • view
There's a Periodic Table in the Blue Prince and even though the game is meant to be set in vaugley the 80s, it's a modern Periodic Table. Yes it bothered me.
jul 27, 2025, 7:38 pm • 43 0 • view
I mean that's an especially egregious case, since that game is all about obsessing over the details. Indeed, having said that, I'm now wondering if that isn't a clue to some time travel shenanigans...
jul 27, 2025, 9:46 pm • 11 0 • view
I don't think earth has that name, those continents, two moons, those planets, that language, or those entirely alternate socioeconomic nationalities, history, and governments. Something tells me it's not a mistake. ;)
jul 28, 2025, 7:39 am • 2 0 • view
How many elements were known when Predator two came out and the woman used a mass spectrometer to analyse the arrow head and declare 'it's an unknown element!"
jul 28, 2025, 8:54 am • 2 0 • view
Glad i don’t do that - just started re-watching Breaking Bad. The whole 5 seasons set over a one year period.
jul 27, 2025, 9:01 pm • 0 0 • view
Surely schools don’t update their periodic table every time a new element is discovered?
jul 27, 2025, 1:30 pm • 2 0 • view
My high school build new lab science classrooms a couple years before I took chem and our tables were reasonably up to date. Definitely newer than Buffy’s even though I was taking chem when Buffy was on. I assume they get replaced when the old ones wear out or the classrooms get new tech.
jul 27, 2025, 3:46 pm • 0 0 • view
I work in a contract chemistry company- our offices were painted last week. I took down a periodic table that’s been there as long as I have used that office (15 years) To be fair, we generally don’t use seaborgium very often.
jul 27, 2025, 4:37 pm • 2 0 • view
I assume that’s the reason most schools don’t update them that often. Nihonium is not coming up that much in 10th grade.
jul 27, 2025, 5:26 pm • 4 0 • view
The chart appears to show 109 elements, which would have been period-accurate for the 90s through 2003 of the movie and series.
jul 27, 2025, 2:08 pm • 0 0 • view
It is pretty accurate, but there are only 103 named elements. There are another 4 unnamed elements. The table changes practically radically in 1997 when a several named elements are confirmed. Only thing that puts it a little out of date is missing Bohrium added in 80s.
jul 27, 2025, 2:12 pm • 0 0 • view
Of course it's "period accurate", what did you expect.
jul 27, 2025, 4:49 pm • 0 0 • view
lol. What a horrible show. I'm glad I did not watch when it aired It looks even ugly now! 🤮
jul 27, 2025, 1:57 pm • 0 0 • view
jul 28, 2025, 1:59 am • 1 0 • view
It seems like more work to get an inaccurate periodic table than an accurate one, what a weird choice for them to make!
jul 27, 2025, 11:23 am • 3 0 • view
Thank you for your service.
jul 27, 2025, 2:32 pm • 2 0 • view
Does that count as age verification?
jul 27, 2025, 11:49 am • 33 0 • view
Love this level of nerdiness.
jul 27, 2025, 12:37 pm • 3 0 • view
You should get out more.
jul 27, 2025, 12:32 pm • 0 0 • view
I did my Chemistry O Level in 1982 and I think we went up to Rutherfordium in the textbooks but knew there was more recent stuff. Rutherfordium was discovered the year before I was born. This should qualify as my Bluesky age verification.
jul 27, 2025, 12:46 pm • 49 0 • view
We just finished filling in the actinides 4 years before I was born.
jul 27, 2025, 4:41 pm • 6 0 • view