Master the Periodic Table, Earn Real Money

5 min read

Short answer: We make Periodic Mole, a chemistry-learning game, and we're running the Element Mastery Prize from June 12 to September 15, 2026. Any kid who masters all 118 elements earns money: at least $25 for everyone who finishes, and $250 for the fastest. Full access is $59, with a 30-day money-back guarantee.

The real win is that your kid walks into chemistry this fall already knowing the periodic table cold. The prize money is just the reason a teenager will do it over the summer.

What is the Element Mastery Prize?

The Element Mastery Prize is a summer contest in which kids earn money for learning the periodic table. It is open from June 12 to September 15, 2026. To finish, your kid masters every element, all 118, by symbol and by name, and completes each of the four contest games at least twice: Bond Forge, Pt Paddle, Capture the Nucleus, and Molecule Hunter.

Every kid who finishes earns at least $25 back. The fastest finishers win the biggest prizes, up to $250, plus a few smaller side prizes along the way like being first through the noble gases. The full rules, every prize, and the live standings are on the contest page, including the handful of states we aren't able to include.

It is not too late to start

Starting in August is fine, because the prize is for speed of mastery, not for who signed up first. We time each kid from their first mastery answer to the one where they master their last element. A kid who starts in late August and learns fast competes on identical footing with one who started in June. So "we missed the beginning" is not a reason to skip it.

What does matter is the close. The contest's last day is September 15, and your kid has to master every element before then. The speed clock is no shorter for an earlier start, but an earlier start means more room to finish, and more of the summer to learn before the first day of class.

For a sense of pace: our lovable robot Cobalt ran the whole course in 31 days before we opened the contest. That is the bar to beat, and plenty of kids will beat it.

Why the $59 is nearly free with the contest

Full access to Periodic Mole is $59, one time, for a year. You need full access for the contest, because it includes all 118 elements and two of the four games are part of the paid set.

If your kid plays and it is not a fit, you have 30 days to get a refund, no questions and no exit survey. If your kid finishes the contest, they earn at least $25 back, and the fastest earn $250. So the realistic worst case for a kid who sticks with it is a net of about $34 for a summer in which they learned the periodic table. The realistic best case is they come out ahead and learned chemistry. There is no version where an engaged kid loses much.

Is getting ahead in chemistry actually worth it?

Getting ahead is worth it because knowing the elements is the foundation of the entire chemistry course. The skill is recognizing that "Fe" is iron and that iron is "Fe", fast, without stopping to think. Every formula, equation, and reaction in the class is written in these symbols, so a student who has them automatic reads chemistry the way a fluent reader reads a sentence, instead of decoding it letter by letter.

This is the most established idea in learning research. "The most important single factor influencing learning is what the learner already knows," wrote David Ausubel in the founding textbook of the field (Ausubel, 1968). A kid keeps new chemistry when it has something to attach to, and the elements are the anchor for the rest of the course.

Is spaced repetition effective for chemistry?

Yes. It is one of the most reliable findings in memory research. Recalling an answer to win a round, rather than re-reading it, is retrieval practice (Roediger and Karpicke, 2006). A little every day instead of one long cram is spaced practice, and in more than a hundred studies, students who spaced their practice remembered more than students who crammed (Cepeda et al., 2006). We only count an element as mastered after your kid recalls it correctly across several spaced sessions, so a finish means the elements are in long-term memory, not held for a day and gone.

Is chemistry class easier with a head start?

Yes, because the head start means working memory to spare. A kid who walks into chemistry already fluent in the elements spends class following the chemistry instead of decoding symbols under pressure. Working memory has room for only about four things at once (Cowan, 2001). The kid who still has to stop and think "wait, what's Fe again?" burns those slots on the symbols; the kid who knows the table cold has them free for the actual reasoning the teacher is testing. Same as the kid who knew 7 times 8 without counting got to spend long division doing long division.

That is what we are really paying for with the prize money: a kid who starts the hardest science class of the year already a step ahead, and a little proud of it.

Try it free. Bond Forge is free to play with a starter set of elements, no account needed. Full access is $59 for a year: every game and all 118 elements, with progress saved. No subscription.

Play Bond Forge free →

When your kid is ready to enter, the contest page has the sign-up and the full rules.

FAQ

Is it too late to enter the contest? No. The prize is for how fast your kid masters the elements, measured from their first answer to their last, not the calendar date they started. A kid who starts in August and learns quickly competes evenly with one who started in June.

How much does my kid actually have to do to win? Master all 118 elements, by symbol and name, and complete each of the four contest games at least twice. Most kids do this in short daily sessions rather than long ones, because we set the games at their level and only count a correct chemistry answer.

What does my kid need to enter? Full access to Periodic Mole, which is $59 for a year and has a 30-day money-back guarantee. We have to exclude a few states for contest-law reasons; the contest page lists them and the full rules.

What if my kid doesn't finish? There is no penalty, and they keep everything they learned. If the whole thing is not for you, the 30-day money-back guarantee means you get the cost back.

How long does it take to learn the periodic table? With short daily sessions, a summer is plenty. There is no fixed number, because we space the reviews and set each question at your kid's level. For a benchmark, our lovable robot Cobalt learned all 118 in 31 days, and most kids who stick with it beat that.

Sources

Ausubel, D. P. (1968). Educational Psychology: A Cognitive View. Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
Cowan, N. (2001). The magical number 4 in short-term memory: A reconsideration of mental storage capacity. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 24, 87–114.
Roediger, H. L., and Karpicke, J. D. (2006). Test-enhanced learning. Psychological Science.
Cepeda, N. J., et al. (2006). Distributed practice in verbal recall tasks: A review and quantitative synthesis. Psychological Bulletin.