Scientists added more but could find no pattern to these additions until, in 1869, Dmitri Mendeleev produced his periodic table. Chemistry 101 was the most boring class I had in college. And I didn't even realize that elements can change (or decay) into other elements. Recall the teams. ), 1,391 global ratings | 965 global reviews. The final void in the table was filled, in 1939, with francium, the last naturally occurring element to be uncovered. Reviewed in the United States on April 14, 2020, The authors style, sarcasm, and constant attempts to be ever more "cute" with explanations and, later, interjections of nihilistic philosophical commentary**, grow more annoying and seemingly arrogant as the book degenerates onward. Gold is the ‘incorruptible’ element; it does not bond with others. If you are looking to give feedback on our new site, please send it along to, To view this site properly, enable cookies in your browser. Did I really just type that? In The Disappearing Spoon by Sam Kean, readers are given a skillful and engaging series of stories about each and every element on the periodic table. It was entertaining enough that I kept coming back to it to read more. Stop the search. Troops later ransacked Bohr's institute but found no gold – just some uninteresting beakers containing brown liquid. Start by marking “The Disappearing Spoon: And Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World from the Periodic Table of the Elements” as Want to Read: Error rating book. The Disappearing Spoon is bedecked with such intriguing and edifying accounts. Photograph: Gallery Collection/Corbis. In The Disappearing Spoon by Sam Kean, readers are given a skillful and engaging series of stories about each and every element on the periodic table. Purposely taking too much meat one evening, he slyly sprinkled a trace amount of radioactive lead onto his leftovers. Stop the search. The Disappearing Spoon. He is currently working as a reporter at Science magazine and as a 2009 Middlebury Environmental Journalism fellow. Lots of cool facts and odd stories about odd scientists are embedded in this book. The ornaments on this Christmas tree are the people and personalities behind the chemistry and physics. First, what’s a summer read, Mr. Josey Wales thumbnail photo? I loved that mercury was a liquid metal—how cool is that?—and years later when I saw Terminator 2, with its villain whose body would re-form when splashed apart, I thought less about director James Cameron’s dazzling special effects than about my own fascination with mercury. But if you understand it, I highly recommend Napoleon's Buttons. The book also explains, in depth, about the incredible and genius people who have discovered each element. THE DISAPPEARING SPOON AND OTHER TRUE TALES OF MADNESS, LOVE, AND THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD FROM THE PERIODIC TABLE OF THE ELEMENTS . Thank you for your patience. I suffer within!" After the rise of Adolf Hitler, two of Germany's leading liberal scientists, Max von Laue and James Franck, sent their Nobel medals to the great Danish physicist Niels Bohr for safe-keeping. But if you understand it, I highly recommend Napoleon's Buttons. I'd recommend it to anyone who's curious about a subject they may have only encountered at the 101 level. Bohr found himself in a tight spot. I’ve previously read Kean’s third book, The Tale of the Duelling Neurosurgeons, which I found very informative and fun to read, so I was looking forward to reading The Disappearing Spoon. Did you know that the longest word in the language (1,185 letters) describes a protein of the tobacco mosaic virus? This book takes a monumental topic -- the periodic table -- and breaks it down into various digestible topic areas. Did I really just type that? The authors of these two books make much of this story in their peregrinations through the periodic table while also waxing lyrical about the Nobel prize's constituent metal. It covers skeletal formulae, Fischer projections, and Haworth projections, and it goes into more depth. Quite honestly, if someone had asked me for a definition of "chemistry" before, I don't think I would have known what to say. First, for anyone with even a casual interest in the elements on the Periodic Table, this book is definitely interesting. The book is organized in an intelligent manner--each chapter is devoted to some theme, with a small group of elements that fit into that theme in some way. This page works best with JavaScript. Refresh and try again. I learned in this book that there are molybdenum mines in Colorado, for example. Not because I wasn't enjoying the book: it's readable, fascinating, and chock full of the very anecdotes about science and scientists that I love. In a breezy style, Kean intersperses chemistry and physics with a potpourri of stories revolving around the elements. There's a problem loading this menu right now. Not only does each section contains stories of the chemistry involving the elements, but also includes aspects such as psychological, historical, physical, etc. Start your review of The Disappearing Spoon: And Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World from the Periodic Table of the Elements. I listened to the audio narrated very ably by Seaan Runnette. This was the element phosphorus. These omissions made many scientists suspicious until, in 1875, they isolated gallium, whose atomic weight and chemistry had been predicted by Mendeleev. At the same time, The Disappearing Spoon wasn't like a lecture in the least bit, and instead folded tons of scientific information into stories about the scientists and their accomplishments. We live in an odd part of the cosmos, it would seem. There are several other interesting stories involving the elements on their own, for example the discovery of radium by Marie Curie, and how the element had ended up killing her and influencing Mark Twain to write a book about the devil wearing a plutonium suit, inspired by the element, or how Gandhi hated the element iodine, or how there were attempted assassinations on Fidel Castro by sneaking excessive amounts of thallium into his meals in order to essentially destroy the cells in his body. Leonard Cassuto is a professor of English at Fordham University and the author of Hard-Boiled Sentimentality: The Secret History of American Crime Stories, now available from Columbia University Press. Clearly alchemy can pay off, even for a quantum physicist. This book was another great summer read for me. I have found the non-fiction, summer read of 2010! While I enjoyed it (and learned a lot of history of science trivia I'd been unaware of, what with my head stuck in the 18th century) and had a few "a-ha" moments as some organic chemistry concepts FINALLY made sense to me (14 years after my last ochem class), I have two big problems with the book. ("It's a sad truth that men like Haber pop up frequently throughout history - petty Fausts who twist scientific innovations into efficient killing devices," Kean writes. A paragraph in the two pages mentioned above (to take an example immediately to hand) opens with the sentence "In addition to Haber's being a Jew, Germany excommunicated him because he had become passé." Kean tries to make difficult concepts comprehensible such as the fine structure constant and why it is so fundamental to our understanding of the universe. Unfortunately, there are times when he tends to oversimplify, and some of his colourful metaphors - with references to Homer's Odyssey, the Rock of Gibraltar or Genghis Khan - seem to come out of left field.
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