Sistemi periodici: una proposta didattica interdisciplinare tra chimica e letteratura

This paper presents an example of interdisciplinary teaching between chemistry and literature. Our starting point was the analysis of Mendeleev’s periodic table and the collection of short stories “Il sistema periodico”, by Primo Levi, a chemist himself before becoming a writer. The main aim of the paper is to propose a dialogue between two different views of the world, trying to highlight the questions that both disciplines arise. i.e. in how many ways can we read and represent the world around us? How do we respond to our need for order? Faced with questions like these, chemistry and literature do not appear far from each other. Trying to work in this interdisciplinary perspective, the teaching proposal is organised in four steps: a thematic approach to Levi’s text; a presentation of the founding principles of Mendeleev’s table; a a digital processing in line with the methods of digital humanities; some final observations that can be shared with students who must be able to consider and tackle them.