Reddit mentions of The Disappearing Spoon: And Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World from the Periodic Table of the Elements

For a fun read, I love The Disappearing Spoon.

For a while, I've been meaning to read Salt which is another fun read.

I also just love the Periodic Table of Videos YouTube channel for other fun stuff.

Textbook-wise, you can't beat Stumm and Morgan or Metcalf and Eddy for your water chemistry/water treatment needs.

If any of you are interested in learning more about the table, I highly enjoyed this book

My favorite science-related leisure reading is Derek Lowe's blog In The Pipeline. He covers new developments in chemistry/biology, the drug discovery industry, and occasionally some other stuff. He writes it in a way would be interesting to anyone that like chemistry and biology regardless of their level of education. I always look forward to reading it over lunch.

​

If you are looking for a book, The Disappearing Spoon is a great set of true short stories about chemistry that is a really fun read.

I took a grad course on the history of chemistry and we used The Development of Modern Chemistry by Ihde.
Another comprehensive (but style-wise a little hard to read) is
Crucibles:The Story of Chemistry from Ancient Alchemy to Nuclear Fission.

I have yet to read The Disappearing Spoon, a pop-sci read on the history and stories behind discoveries of elements.

just some of my standard answers.


The Disappearing Spoon- yes, it's chemistry but I found it very interesting.


Abraham Lincoln's DNA- if you have a good background in genetics you might already know many of these stories. Read the table of contents first.


New Guinea Tapeworms and Jewish Grandmothers- disease based biology. There is a follow up book if it turns out you like it.


Stiff- more than you wanted to know about dead bodies.


And by the same author but space based... Packing for Mars.

I hope these help... Cheers.

The Disappearing Spoon is a Brysonesque look at the history of the Periodic Table.

Chemistry is largely based around what the electrons in the outmost shell are doing, and those shells are described by quantum mechanics. So chemistry had this organizational structure built up around experiment then quantum mechanics comes in and gives a full description of why those experiments worked the way they did. In addition to be much harder to work with than chemical laws, quantum mechanics comes with a lot of baggage that people at the time were uneasy about. It meant we lived in a much more probablistic universe than some people wanted to admit, and that the building blocks of the universe were chaotic to some degree. If you are interested in this I suggest checking out The Disappearing Spoon, as it does go into how chemistry and physics intersected.

If you're into chemistry, or even slightly interested in the subject, I'd highly recommend picking up a copy of The Disappearing Spoon.

It's like a year's worth of chemistry TIL's in a book, with full explanations and anecdotes that will put you on the floor in your own personal chemistry-laughter coma.

This is a great book on why this happens

http://www.amazon.com/The-Disappearing-Spoon-Periodic-Elements/dp/0316051632

and about a million other remarkable trivia

The Disappearing Spoon: And Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World from the Periodic Table of the Elements by Sam Kean

Kean borrows from Mendeleev, the Father of the Period Table, and structures his book based on the table itself. Using it as a map, each chapter is centered on a group of common elements - "The Poisoner's Corridor", "The Galapagos of the Periodic Table" - and peeks at some aspect of their backstory. Where one chapter examines the competition between scientists to find a specific element, another exposes the history of those used as medicine, giving the book a great sense of variety. I wrote a little bit more about the book on my blog.

Purchase: The Disappearing Spoon on Amazon

The New Kings of Nonfiction is a collection of longform journalism edited by This American Life's Ira Glass.

I'm currently reading The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. It's really interesting, here's part of the synopsis:

>Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. She was a poor Southern tobacco farmer who worked the same land as her slave ancestors, yet her cells—taken without her knowledge—became one of the most important tools in medicine. The first “immortal” human cells grown in culture, they are still alive today, though she has been dead for more than sixty years. If you could pile all HeLa cells ever grown onto a scale, they’d weigh more than 50 million metric tons—as much as a hundred Empire State Buildings. HeLa cells were vital for developing the polio vaccine; uncovered secrets of cancer, viruses, and the atom bomb’s effects; helped lead to important advances like in vitro fertilization, cloning, and gene mapping; and have been bought and sold by the billions.

>Yet Henrietta Lacks remains virtually unknown, buried in an unmarked grave.

The Disappearing Spoon is about fascinating stories from the history of the periodic table of elements.

How about The Disappearing Spoon and The Violinist's Thumb by Sam Kean. They are great books about chemistry and genetics.

I will recommend The Disappearing Spoon if you have a serious interest. It was a fantastic read and gives a brief account of the history or relevance of each (most?) element and the race to discover and name them.

The Disappearing Spoon: And Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World from the Periodic Table of the Elements

A great book that mentions this and many other interesting facts regarding discoveries is The disappearing Spoon.

It covers the discovery of each of the elements in the periodic table. It is truly a fascinating collection of stories.

See a gallium spoon melt. It would seem to disappear in black coffee.

The Disappearing Spoon?

So if you find this even mildly interesting, you must read “The Disappearing Spoon”. It’s basically the stories behind the elements and their discovery. Before you yawn and move along, it reads like a badass Indiana Jones novel and is a page turner. The name is from Gallium which was used in a tea party and shaped like spoons. When the patrons stirred their tea the spoon disappeared and everyone was delighted (health concerns?). Anyways, you’ll never look at elements the same way:

The Disappearing Spoon: And Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World from the Periodic Table of the Elements https://www.amazon.com/dp/0316051632/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_XCUVDbVXGT9JM

You beat me to it. As soon as I saw the question, I thought of that book. Another good one might be The Disappearing Spoon: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0316051632/ref=oh_details_o06_s00_i01?ie=UTF8&psc=1

The Invisible Gorilla - about how our perception and memory can deceive us.

The Disappearing Spoon - stories about the periodic table of elements.

Hey, girl in chemistry here. First I wanted to comment on the beaker glasses idea. If you do get something like that, go with a beaker mug and try to pick something with thicker glass. Regular beakers heat up easily and if she pours hot beverage, it will get too hot to hold in a few minutes even if there is a handle (this was tested out in a field by many chemists). Does she like to read? If so, get her The Disappearing Spoon by Sam Kean (http://www.amazon.com/Disappearing-Spoon-Madness-Periodic-Elements/dp/0316051632/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1417607692&sr=8-1&keywords=disappearing+spoon). It's a book full of true, fun and sometimes weird stories about many elements. Any chemist would appreciate that. Also, anything periodic table will be appreciated, in addition to shower curtain idea there are fridge magnets. T-shirts are tough since most of them are really cheesy. Recently I came across this one which is not bad http://www.amazon.com/Never-Everything-Science-Unisex-T-shirt/dp/B00HWEHM6M/ref=pd_sim_a_32?ie=UTF8&refRID=09FK7M4D48KR5RD8K80H. Anything with moles and avogadro will do, example http://www.amazon.com/CafePress-Mole-Problems-Mug-Multi-color/dp/B00INLA6RU/ref=sr_1_8?ie=UTF8&qid=1417609281&sr=8-8&keywords=avogadro+number. Can't really think of anything else right now, but if you want to run a specific idea by me, feel free to do it.

"The Disappearing Spoon!"

It's a wonderful and engrossing read about all the elements from the periodic table! What each one is and does, where they were found/discovered, what for and how they are used in the world today.

I would say many of the stories about many of the elements beginnings in society are so entertaining that they could be turned into a film!

This book is engrossing.

I enjoyed Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded by Simon Winchester.

Also, and this one isn't strictly geo, but it's awesome, The Disappearing Spoon by Sam Kean. Basically a history of the periodic table. And it's really funny too.

Reddit's acting wonky and showing me some comments, then removing them. But I thought I would answer your question as best I could.

Basically, they had figured out spectroscopy. If you put a gas in a tube with metal plates at each end you can sent an electric current through it and the gass will glow. You get different colors based on what is glowing. My 7th grade science teacher did this and it was cool as hell. Here's a cool video that shows some gases (it uses a Tesla coil to excite the gas). If you send the light through a prism, you can separate out the colors. Depending how you do it, you either get a rainbow with some parts missing, or just the missing colors. Here's a wikipedia article with the spectral lines of a bunch of elements. Apparently a guy named Fraunhofer did this in 1802.

There was a solar eclipse in 1868 and they did a spectral analysis of the sun. They found some lines that didn't correspond to anything. Meanwhile, Mendelev didn't publish his periodic table until 1869. His table didn't include Helium. There were a decent number of elements and the periodic table went through several revisions. In addition, Helium is a noble gas so it doesn't really react with other elements. It's also pretty rare on earth (although common in the universe). So it took scientist a while to find it on Earth.

Although I don't remember it covering the discovery of Helium, I'd recommend The Disappearing Spoon by Sam Kean that is a fun, but informative, book on the elements.

Here is a couple, the first two are Pop-sci and may be more of what you are looking for. The third is probably the most dense.

​

https://www.amazon.com/Disappearing-Spoon-Madness-Periodic-Elements/dp/0316051632

http://home.theodoregray.com/bookproducts/the-elements-autographed-copy

https://www.amazon.com/Chemical-Tree-History-Chemistry-Science/dp/0393320685/ref=sr_1_16?keywords=chemistry+history&qid=1574340632&sr=8-16

https://www.amazon.com/Disappearing-Spoon-Madness-Periodic-Elements/dp/0316051632 has every thing you listed in a single book. It is a fantastic read that covers the usage of elements and stories of their discoveries and the scientists behind them. I love it and going to finish it while overseeing exams in the coming weeks.

Gallium disappears.

https://www.amazon.com/Disappearing-Spoon-Madness-Periodic-Elements/dp/0316051632

You should read The Disappearing Spoon. Fascinating read on the elements, how they were named, discovered, and the intrigue behind them. It's a lot more interesting than I'm making it sound...

I dont find "invisible Spoon" is maybe The Disappearing Spoon ( http://www.amazon.com/The-Disappearing-Spoon-Periodic-Elements/dp/0316051632 ) ?

http://www.amazon.com/Disappearing-Spoon-Madness-Periodic-Elements/dp/0316051632/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1319233233&sr=8-1

I read that over the summer. This was one of the stories in it. If you guys are into nonfiction and science, you might want to check that book out. Full of amazing stories about chemistry. This story was cool, but there are a lot of cool stories in that book.

If anyone is looking more elemental oddities, [The Disappearing Spoon] (https://www.amazon.com/Disappearing-Spoon-Madness-Periodic-Elements/dp/0316051632?ie=UTF8&*Version*=1&*entries*=0) is a great read for all ages.

Stop second-guessing your choice of major. Keep your eyes on what you actually want, and remember that the steps along the way will all build there eventually. Check in on your plans when you're picking classes each semester, to make sure you're still on course and still want that ultimate goal. The REU and some lab time will all help.

Try reading some science-related books, not actual science but stuff about scientists themselves or stories about specific scientific discoveries. Like The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Double Helix, Eighth Day of Creation, The Disappearing Spoon, and Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman. Your school should have copies of most of them, and they aren't textbook-heavy (though not quite as light as fiction novels).

Don't forget to stay at least a little rounded. Someone on just about every recruitment weekend for grad school will ask about your hobbies. I'm pretty sure they're required to do so :) Or you'll discover you and your interviewer both do ceramics and can chat about that, leaving a stronger impression than if you were yet another person talking about science. It's good to be done with the requirements, but make sure you keep up something outside your major, even if it's just ultimate frisbee.

Read something interesting about this recently from The Disappearing Spoon by Sam Keane. Won't answer the question but it's food for thought:

"Every amino acid in every protein in your body has a left-handed twist to it. In fact, virtually every protein in every life form that has ever existed is exclusively left-handed. If astrobiologists ever find a microbe on a meteor or moon of Jupiter, almost the first thing they’ll test is the handedness of its proteins. If the proteins are left-handed, the microbe is possibly earthly contamination. If they’re right-handed, it’s certainly alien life.

[...] All of our carbohydrates have a right-handed twist. Regardless, Pasteur’s main point remains: in different contexts, our bodies expect and can only process molecules of a specific handedness. Our cells would not be able to translate left-handed DNA, and if we were fed left-handed sugars, our bodies would starve."

--The last bit confuses me, I always thought that DNA twisted to the left.. ?