If you're looking to spice up any science-themed board game, if you're in the market for an educational chemistry revision aid or if you just collect cool dice, you'll be excited to see the new periodic table dice that Rampage Games are bringing to Kickstarter on 14 May.
The dice are all six-sided and they come in four sets. There are sets of six dice in black and in white. These are numbered 1-6 in the top left-hand corner so they can be used in any game in place of standard six-sided dice. Albert Einstein famously observed that God does not play dice with the universe but you can universally use these dice to upgrade any science of science fiction themed board game.
Less immediately practical as a board game accessory but more appealing to completionists is the set of 20 different six-sided dice that between them represent the 118 elements in the periodic table. Twenty d6 dice mean 120 dice faces, so the remaining two sides are taken up by an atom and a radiation symbol. The dice in this complete periodic table set are all in black but the colour in which the different faces are printed varies to represent the group in which the element lies in the periodic table (ie: elements with similar chemical properties are printed in matching colours).
Finally, Rampage Games are offering a set of six 'radioactive' dice. These feature only the radioactive elements but, appropriately, these dice all glow in the dark!
All the dice show on each face the name and chemical symbol (one- or two-letter abbreviation) for an element, along with its atomic number, atomic weight and the configuration of its electrons, so even for those who may find it a stretch to incorporate all these periodic table dice in a board game, there are clear educational applications. You may previously have had no idea that the atomic number of Berylium was 4 but play a couple of games substituting the 1-6 periodic table dice for the standard d6 and you'll find you not only know the atomic numbers of Hydrogen, Helium, Lithium, Beryllium, Boron and Carbon but you'll also be able to cite each of these element's atomic weights. Move on to the full element set and before long you'll be singing the lyrics to Tom Lehrer's reworking of the Major General's song from Gilbert & Sullivan's Pirates of Penzance.
The Ultimate Periodic Table Dice will be on Kickstarter on 14 May. Click here for details.