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Periodic Tales: The Curious Lives of the Elements

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Humans and other species have generally been very wary of bright colours in nature which may signify ripe fruit and fresh meat or warn of poisonous berries and venomous creatures. The colours of fruits are based on yellow xanthophyll, the orange carotenes and purple anthocyanins which are all organic compounds containing no metallic elements. It must be tough to write a book on science. Make it too simplistic and it may have wider appeal but the people most likely to buy it will think it stinks. Go gung-ho into the subject and in this case chemists will love it while it cures the insomnia of the general public. Ultimately, this book is a bit of both. So what of the book then - well you have several layers to this book. The first is that of the story of him deciding to create his own collection of elements from periodic table, now some are incredibly easy to source others are near on impossible. Mr Aldersey-Williams’ select bibliography now strongly and helpfully points me in the direction of I Nechaev’s 1942 book “Chemical Elements” (or rather of the translation from the Russian), as being my long-lost book. Like the elements that Aldersey-Williams collected in his youth, this book is just that: a fun and accessible collection of stories about the periodic table and the elements that comprise it. I largely enjoyed reading Periodic Tales, but the disjointed nature of the content made it a bit difficult to read in large chunks, and I found my motivation to finish it dwindling as time progressed (although I’m entirely glad I did finish it since Aldersey-Williams’s excursions to the mines of Germany and Sweden offered some interesting avenues for my research and writing).

Periodic Tales - Hugh Aldersey-Williams - Google Books Periodic Tales - Hugh Aldersey-Williams - Google Books

The Periodic Table by Primo Levi is an impassioned response to the Holocaust: Consisting of 21 short stories, each possessing the name of a chemical element, the collection tells of the author's experiences as a Jewish-Italian chemist before, during, and after Auschwitz in luminous, clear, and unfailingly beautiful prose. It has been named the best science book ever by the Royal Institution of Great Britain, and is considered to be Levi's crowning achievement. While their chemical properties of the elements in the periodic table are important it is the cultural baggage these substances have accumulated that the author is most concerned with. This is particularly true when talking about the things we value and esteem. Gold and silver are not only objects of worth but symbols of it as well. Just ask the guy who gets the bronze medal. However there was a time when aluminum w Great fun to read and an endless fund of unlikely and improbable anecdotes ... sharp and often witty"In a past review I confessed that I was for the most part scientifically illiterate. I'm not sure how far this book went in curing that but I do know a bit more about the periodic table than I used to. I can name the elements designated as halogens ,fluorine, chlorine, bromine and iodine as well as a few of the noble gases ,xenon, radon, and krypton. I'm not sure if this really counts as scientific knowledge or just knowledge of scientific terms though.

Wider Reading List (Optional) — Wilmslow High School Wider Reading List (Optional) — Wilmslow High School

One difference from Kean's book is that Aldersey-Williams' book is more autobiographical and outlines a number of personal household experiments which he carries out to illustrate the properties of the elements under discussion - such as pouring molten lead into water to produce weird shapes from which one's fortune can be told and extracting phosphorus from one's own urine. Grāmatas pamatā ir ķīmisko elementu periodiskā tabula. Autors lasītājam pavēsta zināmu un ne tik zināmo elementu vēsturi. Savulaik jau cilvēki pazina tikai dažus elementus -zeltu, dzelzi, alvu, sēru, dzīvsudrabu, varu. Pārējie elementi bija pazīstami tikai savienojumu veidā. Ķīmijas pirmsākumi noteikti meklējami alķīmijā, cilvēku centienos jebkuru vielu pārvērst zeltā. Katra jauna elementa atklāšana radīja pavērsienu cilvēces attīstības vēsturē. Mākslinieki meklēja veidus, kā šo novitāti iekļaut savos darbos, jaunie elementi kļuva par modes simboliem un beigu beigās par sacensību elementu, lai noteiktu, kura sabiedriskā iekārta ir pārāka – komunisms vai kapitālisms. Dažādas ražošanas nozares savukārt iekļāva jaunos elementus savos ražojumos. Nekas nedod skaistāku zaļo krāsu par arsēnu, un hlors ir tīri labs pamats ķīmisko ieroču ražošanai.Humans are meaning-making beings, attaching significance and projecting our fears and desires onto the natural world. In his 2011 book, Periodic Tales: A Cultural History of the Elements, from Arsenic to Zinc, British author and journalist Hugh Aldersey-Williams examines how we’ve given meaning to the elements. Through a wide-ranging collection of historical examples, Aldersey-Williams examines how the elements on the periodic table don’t simply stay on a chart but are rather woven into the fabric of our culture, popping up in artists’ studios, streetlamps, cosmetics, fireworks, and more. Along the way, in addition to learning the history and science of the elements that make up the periodic table, Aldersey-Williams also examines how we’ve assigned specific cultural significance to these elements and integrated them into our everyday lives. Everything in the universe is made of them, including you. Like you, the elements have personalities, attitudes, talents, shortcomings, stories rich with meaning. For the UK edition:“[F]ascinating and beautiful. . . . If only chemistry had been like this at school. . . . [A] rich compilation of delicious tales.”— Matt Ridley, Prospect magazine urn:lcp:periodictalescul00alde_0:epub:bf0ba959-4fdc-4ca1-9259-54f2e8e65f20 Extramarc University of Alberta Libraries Foldoutcount 0 Identifier periodictalescul00alde_0 Identifier-ark ark:/13960/t3kw93m8f Invoice 1213 Isbn 9780061824722 Ja lasītājs neko no šī temata iepriekš nebūs daudz lasījis, tad šī grāmata viņam būs īsta zināšanu krātuve. Fakti un notikumi te tiek pasniegti interesantā un saistošā veidā. Te nav sausas zinātniskas valodas ar metālu kušanas temperatūrām un elektronu uzskaiti ārējās elektronu čaulās. Te viss tiek piesaistīts sadzīvei. Kas interesanti, daļu no metāliem, kuru nosaukumi šķiet eksotiski, patiesībā ikdienā mums ir visapkārt. Lasot šo grāmatu patiešām ir jāuzmanās, lai nekļūtu par elementu kolekcionāru. Tie ir cilvēki, kas cenšas iegūt savā īpašumā visus iespējamos elementus. Man šāda doma galvā iešaujas laiku pa laikam, bet pagaidām esmu tam turējies pretī.

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