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raviwarrier's review
3.0
A word porn of chemical terms.
A treasure for chemists but for the scientifically-challenged, this book would be like reading a graduate level chemistry textbook in 10th grade, which is why it bored me/went over my head.
A treasure for chemists but for the scientifically-challenged, this book would be like reading a graduate level chemistry textbook in 10th grade, which is why it bored me/went over my head.
jocelynh's review
3.0
This book read like a colloquial textbook, and I definitely did not have the prerequisite knowledge to grasp more than the basic gist, most of the time. A lot of chemistry went way over my head, but there were some fun anecdotes sprinkled in.
I hesitate to give it fewer than three stars, mainly because I imagine this would be much more fun for what is presumably the target audience... though I may be wrong, given that a the chapters consist mainly of lists of compounds, experiments, and reactions.
Either way, Ignition! does cover a great deal of ground while remaining rather personable, and I picked up a few things here or there.
I hesitate to give it fewer than three stars, mainly because I imagine this would be much more fun for what is presumably the target audience... though I may be wrong, given that a the chapters consist mainly of lists of compounds, experiments, and reactions.
Either way, Ignition! does cover a great deal of ground while remaining rather personable, and I picked up a few things here or there.
dreamingdust's review against another edition
4.0
An interesting history of a niche piece of science history. Sometimes heavy going, but often amusing.
earthheartspages's review against another edition
4.0
What can I say. I am glad I had 2 semesters of chemistry before reading this book AND have a huge interest in astronomy.
J.D.Clark is a wonderful storyteller while being a scientist. This book will flood you with knowledge of liquid propellants you never expected, BUT you will probably need wikipedia to get through it. It's a scientific read that is also entertaining. You can see through the eyes of a man who shaped a small part of our history. The struggles but also the amusement and fascination with this subject.
Probably my favourite parts are the stories of him and his collegues across the globe accidentally blowing things up and his delightful discriptions of different chemicals. Also by the end of this book you will probably watch SpaceX launches and historic footage of rocket launches through completely different eyes.
I highly recommend this book if you're into rocket sciences and astronomy and have had some training in chemistry.
If you see it on someone's bookshelf, at least go read Assimov's introduction. It's beautiful.
J.D.Clark is a wonderful storyteller while being a scientist. This book will flood you with knowledge of liquid propellants you never expected, BUT you will probably need wikipedia to get through it. It's a scientific read that is also entertaining. You can see through the eyes of a man who shaped a small part of our history. The struggles but also the amusement and fascination with this subject.
Probably my favourite parts are the stories of him and his collegues across the globe accidentally blowing things up and his delightful discriptions of different chemicals. Also by the end of this book you will probably watch SpaceX launches and historic footage of rocket launches through completely different eyes.
I highly recommend this book if you're into rocket sciences and astronomy and have had some training in chemistry.
If you see it on someone's bookshelf, at least go read Assimov's introduction. It's beautiful.
mburnamfink's review against another edition
4.0
Sometimes, it actually is rocket science. Clark was a leading liquid fuels scientist from the 1950s to the 1970s, and this book is a hilarious collection of anecdotes organized around rocket fuels. On the one hand, rocket fuel isn't that hard. Tsiolkovsky figured out that liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen were pretty much as good as chemical fuels can get, and they're used in high performance applications today. But LOX and liquid hydrogen are horrific to work with, and as rockets move from applied science experiment to key military technology, fuels have to get a lot less cryogenic and volatile. Hence, people like Clark, and billions of dollars of research into hydrazine, nitric acid, boron compounds, and more exotic chemistries.
Clark is a great story teller, and when he injects human interest, abound funding, lab explosions, and horrible ideas like mercury based rocket fuel, the book is quite good. But it's organized by chemistry, rather than chronologically, so expect to spend a lot of time with reaction diagrams and wandering in the forest of alternatives abandoned because their freezing points were too high, density too low, or they simply failed to ignite reliably.
I want to close with the famous quote about, Flourine Trioxide, the best part of the book.
“It is, of course, extremely toxic, but that’s the least of the problem. It is hypergolic with every known fuel, and so rapidly hypergolic that no ignition delay has ever been measured. It is also hypergolic with such things as cloth, wood, and test engineers, not to mention asbestos, sand, and water-with which it reacts explosively. It can be kept in some of the ordinary structural metals-steel, copper, aluminium, etc.-because of the formation of a thin film of insoluble metal fluoride which protects the bulk of the metal, just as the invisible coat of oxide on aluminium keeps it from burning up in the atmosphere. If, however, this coat is melted or scrubbed off, and has no chance to reform, the operator is confronted with the problem of coping with a metal-fluorine fire. For dealing with this situation, I have always recommended a good pair of running shoes.”
Clark is a great story teller, and when he injects human interest, abound funding, lab explosions, and horrible ideas like mercury based rocket fuel, the book is quite good. But it's organized by chemistry, rather than chronologically, so expect to spend a lot of time with reaction diagrams and wandering in the forest of alternatives abandoned because their freezing points were too high, density too low, or they simply failed to ignite reliably.
I want to close with the famous quote about, Flourine Trioxide, the best part of the book.
“It is, of course, extremely toxic, but that’s the least of the problem. It is hypergolic with every known fuel, and so rapidly hypergolic that no ignition delay has ever been measured. It is also hypergolic with such things as cloth, wood, and test engineers, not to mention asbestos, sand, and water-with which it reacts explosively. It can be kept in some of the ordinary structural metals-steel, copper, aluminium, etc.-because of the formation of a thin film of insoluble metal fluoride which protects the bulk of the metal, just as the invisible coat of oxide on aluminium keeps it from burning up in the atmosphere. If, however, this coat is melted or scrubbed off, and has no chance to reform, the operator is confronted with the problem of coping with a metal-fluorine fire. For dealing with this situation, I have always recommended a good pair of running shoes.”
valdelane's review against another edition
4.5
The Wile E. Coyote history of rocket chemistry. Hilarious!
zetasyanthis's review against another edition
5.0
This book is absolutely wild and completely hilarious. A lot of the chemistry was over my head, but reading "Things I Won't Work With" and "How Not to Do It" by Derek Lowe gave me enough background that I was able to laugh quite a lot. :)
douglasjsellers's review against another edition
3.0
A bit try after you realize the basic pattern of the book: a lot of chemistry followed by everything blowing up. Rinse and repeat.
loppear's review against another edition
3.0
A lot of chemistry in a field I don't care about, but as promised a dry wit and funny close description of a technical process of discovery, trial, misguided ideas. And lots of explosions.
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