Summary of Sam Kean's The Disappearing Spoon

Everest Media

Description

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book.
Sample Book Insights:
#1 The periodic table is a chart of the elements, and it is available to everyone. It is organized and honed, but it is still a jumble of long numbers, abbreviations, and computer error messages.
#2 The castle is made up of different materials in different areas. The coordinates of an element determine nearly everything scientifically interesting about it. The noble gases are a set of elements in column eighteen at the far right-hand side of the table.
#3 Helium is an example of an element that cannot be broken down or altered by normal, chemical means. It took scientists 2,200 years to realize what elements really are, because most are too changeable.
#4 The repose of the noble gases is rare. The most energetic and reactive gases are found in the halogen column to the west, and they form an alliance of interests with the alkali metals.

Sujets

• Science
• History
• Histoire

Informations

• Publié par: Everest Media LLC
• Date de parution: 24 juillet 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9798822547889
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Insights on Sam Kean's The Disappearing Spoon
Contents Insights from Chapter 1 Insights from Chapter 2 Insights from Chapter 3 Insights from Chapter 4 Insights from Chapter 5
Insights from Chapter 1

#1

The periodic table is a chart of the elements, and it is available to everyone. It is organized and honed, but it is still a jumble of long numbers, abbreviations, and computer error messages.

#2

The castle is made up of different materials in different areas. The coordinates of an element determine nearly everything scientifically interesting about it. The noble gases are a set of elements in column eighteen at the far right-hand side of the table.

#3

Helium is an example of an element that cannot be broken down or altered by normal, chemical means. It took scientists 2,200 years to realize what elements really are, because most are too changeable.

#4

The repose of the noble gases is rare. The most energetic and reactive gases are found in the halogen column to the west, and they form an alliance of interests with the alkali metals.

#5

The most important part of an atom is its electrons, which take up virtually all its space. They are the clouds swirling around the atom’s compact core, the nucleus.

#6

Gilbert Lewis was a scientist who spent his life researching how atoms’ electrons behave and bond in acids and bases. He was the best scientist never to win the Nobel Prize, and he knew it. He never discovered one amazing thing, but he refined how an atom’s electrons work in many contexts.

#7

The pH scale is used to measure the strength of acids. It goes from 1 to 14, with 1 being the strongest and 14 being the weakest. The scale’s unusual accounting methods boost the strength of acids by ten times for each unit moved up on the scale.

#8

The strongest solo acid is still the boron-based carborane, which is simultaneously the world’s strongest and gentlest acid. It can add an octane kick to gasoline, and help make vitamins digestible.

#9

The transition metals, which are located in the middle of the periodic table, have exasperating chemistry. They have more flexibility than other atoms in how they store their electrons. They also fight other atoms to secure full outer energy levels with eight electrons.

#10

The transition metals, which begin in columns three through twelve of the fourth through seventh rows, bury their d-shell electrons and leave them shielded beneath other layers. This explains why they are so similar and cannot be distinguished from one another.

#11

The nucleus is the core and essence of an atom. It contains the atomic number, which determines the atom’s identity, and the number of neutrons, which determines the atom’s weight. Elements do not normally lose neutrons, but they can have different numbers of neutrons.

#12

The most abundant element in the universe is oxygen, element eight. But why. scientists might answer that oxygen has a very stable nucleus. But Goeppert-Mayer’s theory explains why elements such as calcium are disproportionately plentiful and why our bodies use them.

#13

The nuclear shell model is a brilliant piece of physics. However, it was duplicated by male physicists in Germany, and Goeppert-Mayer lost credit for it.

#14

The backbone of amino acids, which form proteins, is made up of carbon. Because it must share its electrons with other atoms, carbon is able to build complex chains and webs of molecules.

#15

The longest nontechnical word in the Oxford English Dictionary is based on the nearest chemical cousin of carbon, an element often cited as an alternative to carbon-based life in other galaxies.

#16

The longest nontechnical word in the Oxford English Dictionary is the forty-five-letter pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis, or p45. It is a disease caused by inhaling silicon dioxide, which is the major component of sand and glass.

#17

Silicon has ensured itself immortality in another way. Like a virus, a quasi-living creature has survived by preying parasitically on the element below it.

#18

Every family has a black sheep. In the case of the periodic table, it’s germanium, a sorry, no-luck element. We use silicon in computers, microchips, cars, and calculators. But if things had gone differently sixty years ago, we might all be talking about Germanium Valley in northern California today.

#19

By 1954, the transistor industry had grown. The processing power of computers had increased by orders of magnitude, and new product lines had emerged. But engineers were still interested in silicon because it was cheaper than germanium.

#20

The transistor industry faced another crisis in 1958. While cheap silicon transistors worked okay, fancy computer circuits required scores of them. This was expensive and inefficient.

#21

The names of the scientists who discovered many of the elements and arranged them into the first periodic tables have long since been forgotten. But some names have achieved universal fame, and not always for the best reasons.

#22

The history of the periodic table is the history of the many characters who shaped it. The first was German chemist Robert Bunsen, who invented the spectroscope, which uses light to study elements. He could now peer inside exotic compounds without boiling them down or disintegrating them with acid.

#23

The spectroscope helped identify new elements, and it helped chemists find old elements in new substances. It also helped organize elements into a family tree. Dmitri Mendeleev, the man generally credited with creating the first periodic table, was a product of this work.

#24

The more serious rival to Mendeleev was Julius Lothar Meyer, a German chemist with an unruly white beard and neatly oiled black hair. Meyer had also worked under Bunsen at Heidelberg and had serious professional credentials. While both men left gaps on their table where no known elements fit, Mendeleev had the courage to predict that new elements would be discovered.

#25

Mendeleev’s life is similar to that of Darwin and Einstein. He did the most work, and he did it more elegantly than others. He saw how far the consequences extended, and he backed up his findings with reams of evidence.

#26

The discovery of eka-aluminium, now known as gallium, raises the question of what really drives science forward: theories or experiments.