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A book about a table. Reminded me that I should have been a chemist.
This book gives the history of the periodic table and discovery of the elements that are contained within. Author Sam Kean has arranged elements both into their well known groupings, but also into the groups of elements that share a commonalities. Well written, the anecdotal stories of the elements discovery and use help engage the reader in what could be a very boring story.
While the idea that I had of what this book was going to be about and the fact that it appears to be very well researched, the writing is terrible.It jumps from one subject to the other without completing previous ideas with two whole paragraphs and three unrelated stories in the middle. It's like when you are talking to a friend you haven't seen in years and you try to catch up with everything that has happened in your lives in 5 minutes. I felt like it could have been organized better (if the periodic table was organized like this book is, it would look like a 3 year old drawing). So one star for being a good idea and one for being well researched but Sam Kean should have definitely left the writing to someone else.
It was a science book for people who aren't really interested in the science. Good facts and history and a dabble of actual knowledge, but not much that would actually be of use in a chemistry lab.
Occasionally uneven, but overall an informative and entertaining book. The author provides many amusing anecdotes about the history of the elements in the periodic table, but every now and then veers off into digressions about morality that add a jarring note to an otherwise interesting collection of stories.
reading Sam Kean is always a pleasure, although I like the 2 books he wrote after this one better: "the violinist thumb" and "the tale of the dueling neurosurgeons" .
"The Disappearing Spoon" is full of interesting tidbits about the chemical elements with the author's characteristic humor and quirkiness. What I appreciated the most was his focus on scientists as people and on how their discoveries were made (dispelling popular myths). This said, I think he tries to cram too much information into one book, and some chapters feel a bit superfluous because of it. Also having a more complete periodic table (with weights and full names) would have been useful.
"To quote no less a personage than Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (apologies to my old lab director!), "The history of science is science itself""
"As a child in the early 1980s , I tended to talk with things in my mouth"
"They'll whistle (or whatever) in real admiration - staggered at all we human beings have managed to pack into our periodic table of elements"
"The Disappearing Spoon" is full of interesting tidbits about the chemical elements with the author's characteristic humor and quirkiness. What I appreciated the most was his focus on scientists as people and on how their discoveries were made (dispelling popular myths). This said, I think he tries to cram too much information into one book, and some chapters feel a bit superfluous because of it. Also having a more complete periodic table (with weights and full names) would have been useful.
"To quote no less a personage than Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (apologies to my old lab director!), "The history of science is science itself""
"As a child in the early 1980s , I tended to talk with things in my mouth"
"They'll whistle (or whatever) in real admiration - staggered at all we human beings have managed to pack into our periodic table of elements"
Mr. Kean uses the structure of the periodic table of elements to delve into its history, chemical attributes, and the very nature of the elements that make up this world and everything in it. And he puts the elements in their proper perspective, too. “As we know, 90 percent of particles in the universe are hydrogen, and the other 10 percent are helium. Everything else, including six million billion billion kilos of earth, is a cosmic rounding error.”
While all the elements in the universe besides hydrogen and helium are “a cosmic rounding error,” many of them are absolutely vital to life on earth, but it took scientists many years to identify, much less understand each element’s place on the periodic table and in the processes of life. Arranged generally chronologically, The Disappearing Spoon guides the reader through history as new discoveries were made. Elements weren’t even recognized as such – “substance[s] that cannot be broken down or altered by normal, chemical means” – until the early 1800s, and often discoveries of new elements were painstakingly slow in coming.
Mr. Kean paints portraits of many interesting individuals related to the periodic table in The Disappearing Spoon. Maria Goeppert-Mayer, born in Germany in 1906, overcame the limitations placed upon women scientists – most PhD programs at the time refused to admit women and certainly wouldn’t hire one – to eventually be invited to participate in the Manhattan Project. In a vital contribution to understanding how atoms are put together, she discovered the fundamental facts of how nuclei shells function. Her nuclear shell model was "brilliant physics” and she eventually won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1963. Another scientist, Clair Patterson, initially focused on using rates of uranium decay to estimate the age of the universe. Realizing that the lead omnipresent in human hair, skin, and nails, was ruining his ability to get results, he resorted to drastic measures to maintain an uncontaminated field for his experiments. “This scrupulousness soon morphed into obsession” and Patterson became an activist against lead in paint, gasoline, and other substances, almost single-handedly responsible for raising public awareness of the dangers of lead.
The influence of the elements shows up in everything from popular culture to global socio-political situations. Mark Twain’s science fiction short story “Sold to Satan” incorporates Marie Curie’s astonishing discoveries about radium made only six years before its 1904 publication – the devil is made entirely of the radioactive material and wears a protective coat of polonium to prevent the instant incineration of the people he meets. For many years, the tantalum and niobium used in cell phones was mined in the Democratic Republic of Congo and sold to fund a brutal war; now the demand has shifted to the tin also plentiful in the Congolese ground.
The Disappearing Spoon presents an accessible pathway to comprehending more about the building blocks that make up our world. Mr. Kean rounds out the science with the human interest stories that surrounded the myriad and still ongoing discoveries.
For more book reviews, come visit my blog, Build Enough Bookshelves.
While all the elements in the universe besides hydrogen and helium are “a cosmic rounding error,” many of them are absolutely vital to life on earth, but it took scientists many years to identify, much less understand each element’s place on the periodic table and in the processes of life. Arranged generally chronologically, The Disappearing Spoon guides the reader through history as new discoveries were made. Elements weren’t even recognized as such – “substance[s] that cannot be broken down or altered by normal, chemical means” – until the early 1800s, and often discoveries of new elements were painstakingly slow in coming.
Mr. Kean paints portraits of many interesting individuals related to the periodic table in The Disappearing Spoon. Maria Goeppert-Mayer, born in Germany in 1906, overcame the limitations placed upon women scientists – most PhD programs at the time refused to admit women and certainly wouldn’t hire one – to eventually be invited to participate in the Manhattan Project. In a vital contribution to understanding how atoms are put together, she discovered the fundamental facts of how nuclei shells function. Her nuclear shell model was "brilliant physics” and she eventually won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1963. Another scientist, Clair Patterson, initially focused on using rates of uranium decay to estimate the age of the universe. Realizing that the lead omnipresent in human hair, skin, and nails, was ruining his ability to get results, he resorted to drastic measures to maintain an uncontaminated field for his experiments. “This scrupulousness soon morphed into obsession” and Patterson became an activist against lead in paint, gasoline, and other substances, almost single-handedly responsible for raising public awareness of the dangers of lead.
The influence of the elements shows up in everything from popular culture to global socio-political situations. Mark Twain’s science fiction short story “Sold to Satan” incorporates Marie Curie’s astonishing discoveries about radium made only six years before its 1904 publication – the devil is made entirely of the radioactive material and wears a protective coat of polonium to prevent the instant incineration of the people he meets. For many years, the tantalum and niobium used in cell phones was mined in the Democratic Republic of Congo and sold to fund a brutal war; now the demand has shifted to the tin also plentiful in the Congolese ground.
The Disappearing Spoon presents an accessible pathway to comprehending more about the building blocks that make up our world. Mr. Kean rounds out the science with the human interest stories that surrounded the myriad and still ongoing discoveries.
For more book reviews, come visit my blog, Build Enough Bookshelves.
Grandísimo libro que abarca mucho. Con la excusa de recorrer la tabla periódica, nos cuenta muchas, muchas historias sobre ciencia y científicos relacionadas con el descubrimiento y uso de los diferentes elementos químicos. Son tantos los científicos y tantas las historias que a veces abruma la cantidad de cosas entretenidas que hay para leer. Hacia el último tercio del libro el autor empieza a quedarse sin elementos, por lo que saltamos a la cosmología, la física cuántica, la física nuclear y muchas otras ramas del saber sobre las que ya no nos regalan tantas historias curiosas pero que abren la puerta a posteriores lecturas. Un libro grande, grandioso casi, con muchísima chicha. Muy entretenido.
Well, I checked this out based purely on the front cover and the fact that it was for young readers and I mistakenly thought it was a mystery. Sometimes when you don’t read the description of a book you’re in for a surprise. I was very pleasantly surprised and found the book fascinating. Well written and engaging and light enough for someone who is not a huge science fan. I learned a lot!