The Disappearing Spoon, Sam Kean

What a chemistry book.  I wish this had been my text – I might have gone much further with chemistry.  Sam not only loves chemistry – it is evident, but he also loves spinning stories.  So we learn about gallium, the element that makes a spoon disappear when it turns liquid over 65F degrees. 

This has become the latest of my favorite books of the year.  It had everything I love in a reading – history, stories, humor, science, nature, mystery, and knowledge.  And chemistry was never my favorite subject (although my chemistry set allowed my buddy Tom Smith and I hours of discovery and rotten smelling and weird compounds in my basement).  Gloss over any parts that do not capture you, because there is sure to be something on the next page that does.

There are hucksters and alchemists, astronomers, archaeologists and almost every other scientist flitting around the chapters sharing discoveries and pondering over mysteries.  We meet obscure scientists who should not be so obscure and famous scientists who probably got too much credit.  There are stories about silicon chips and storms on Jupiter.

Learn about the periodic table and while you are at it learn about the solar system.  I love the scientific romp and the image of neon rain on Jupiter.  I love learning about the scientists from Pauling to Curie who achieved world acclaim and the more obscure scientists who made great discoveries, but did not get their own name attached to them.

There is mystery (after all the great poisons are on the table too) and mythology – King Midas was a real person.  But King Midas had zinc in his countries ore and that meant that when his metallurgists made bronze it was brass and very shiny!  You can learn about counterfeiting and nuclear bombs and nuclear energy.   I even learned about titanium as a hip replacement and how it was discovered that it was the only metal that fooled the bones in to grafting with it. 

I am amazed at the history that is captured by the Periodic Table and even more – how few I have even heard of.  These are the basic building blocks of the universe and still I know only a few of them.  Perhaps if chemists had been a little more generous with simple shore names like sulfur, Iodine, Helium, silver, and gold instead of proactinum, brevium, lutetium, europium, and gadolinium we might remember more.