Quick, think of an invention and you probably have the periodic table, that amazing chart of elements you stared at in science class, to thank for it. The Parker 51 pen has a ruthenium tip that doesn’t crumple like gold and looks just as pretty. Your cellphone keeps you in contact because of tantalum, and you can probably thank the fluoride in water for your strong teeth. But the periodic table, in this irresistible new book, also doesn’t just explain and explore the elements, it reveals history, passions, madness, and the all-out drama of our lives.
Feasting off the periodic table with tales of wonder and shock
Sam Kean, winner of the National Association of Science Writers’ runner-up award for best writer under the age of 30, is brimming with puckish wit, and his love for the elements is downright infectious. He jumps right in to tell you how the periodic table was invented independently by six different people, but claimed in 1869 by Dmitri Mendeleev, who quickly wrote up the table to meet a textbook publisher’s deadline, brazenly naming elements he had never seen. Kean explains why the elements appear as they do (it has to do with recurring chemical properties), and then he zooms off on a wild anecdotal ride sure to dazzle any reader.
Kean finds amazing stories attached to every element of the table.
Jokester gallium, which looks like aluminum, can be shaped into a spoon, which promptly disappears when stirred into hot tea. Silver was made into a supplement that was supposed to boost the immune system, but it ended up turning Stan Jones, a senatorial candidate from Montana, completely blue in 2002. Truly, according to Kean, each exploration of an element has somehow changed the way we live and die.
Warfare could not happen without periodic table chemistry. When it was discovered that steel could be strengthened when spiked with the element molybdenum, it was drafted into action in World War I. And there’s a symbolic reason the missiles that sent Godzilla to his reptilian doom were tipped with cadmium. So many Japanese were poisoned working in the cadmium mines, that they simply could not have imagined anything more deadly.
Because of the periodic table, even the term mad scientist takes on new meaning. Wilhelm Röntgen made a radical discovery with barium coated plates. He could see through his skin to the bones of his own hand and assumed he had gone crazy. What he had truly seen was his discovery of the X-ray. The element lithium calmed the poet Robert Lowell’s bipolar surges, but many felt it had an unfortunate side effect, managing his madness but flattening his genius.
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