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Science rocks.  If I were a school superintendent I would put tables like this all over every school in my district.

Update: In 2003, Wake Forest University students Nazila Alimohammadi and Anna Clark built this picnic table.

The two women students created the sculpture as part of a public art course taught in the fall by David Finn, associate professor of art. Students in the class were paired up and assigned to work with campus organizations in creating works for public display. “We wanted our project to be fun and functional without a lot of emotional or political content,” Clark says. An aspiring dentist, Alimohammadi had taken several chemistry classes and suggested working with that department. They devised their “Periodic Table” concept — a pun of the familiar Periodic Table of Elements configuration — and the department responded enthusiastically. Alimohammadi did the structural steel work and Clark hand-painted the surface tiles. The piece, which was dedicated in an informal picnic ceremony on April 15, is accurate in every detail, right down to the auxiliary lanthanides and actinides tables that constitute the table’s bench.

[via & via]

These tables, created by Chul An Kwak for his “r.n.i. series,” were inspired by running horses.  “Sculpted from wood, these designs offer the same sort of flat surface you’d see in a conventional table but with legs that seem kinetic and alive,” writes Web Urbanist. 

They look, however, like they were inspired by the nightmares of Guillermo del Torro or H.P. Lovecraft. 

[images via DesignBoom]