Sam Kean takes the Periodic Table as a loose guide for a series of stories about the unusual things we know about the elements and how we found them out.\u00a0 There’s some promise that this is a book about the periodic table and its history, but that falls more and more by the wayside as the book goes on.\u00a0 From a writing perspective the table is as much a McGuffin and an organizing principle.\u00a0 How that affects your enjoyment is largely going to be a function of how much you wanted to know the table’s story.<\/p>\n
Kean’s writing has two excellent features.\u00a0 He can clearly and intuitively explain science and he can bring scientists to life.\u00a0 His discussions of the discoveries that people have made are plain enough that one can follow them easily, but keeps enough of the complexity that the reader understands why they are discoveries.\u00a0 That balance keeps the reader’s interest up without losing them in the details.\u00a0 Secondly, he does a great job at making the scientists distinct and memorable with a few anecdotes.\u00a0 Several times he reminds the reader of a person we haven’t talked about in a couple chapters with a pithy summary of the person’s character that brings them immediately back into focus without the feeling that you’ve been studying for a test.<\/p>\n
The periodic table is a broad subject, even when taken strictly.\u00a0 Just understanding why the thing is laid out the way it is and what it says keeps physics and chemistry students busy for weeks.\u00a0 If you throw in a historical discussion of how we figured out the layout, there’s quite a bit to say.\u00a0 Kean doesn’t say all of that.\u00a0 In fact, he strays from the details and evolution of the table itself pretty quickly, branching into other areas of physics, chemistry and the people who do them.\u00a0 If you are interested in that in-depth exploration, you will be disappointed.<\/p>\n
I was not disappointed.\u00a0 The topics and discussions are connected and intriguing.\u00a0 Though Kean never goes into the secret origins of the periodic table in obsessive detail, everything he talks about rhetorically connects.\u00a0 He started from the table, and stays connected, so there’s always a way to where we started.\u00a0 And the trips are interesting and informative.<\/p>\n
Strongly recommended.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Sam Kean takes the Periodic Table as a loose guide for a series of stories about the unusual things we know about the elements and how we found them out.\u00a0 There’s some promise that this is a book about the periodic table and its history, but that falls more and more by the wayside as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1261","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1261","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1261"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1261\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1264,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1261\/revisions\/1264"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1261"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1261"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1261"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}