Döbereiner’s studies of strontium, which led him to group elements into columns like those later used in the first periodic tables, were encouraged by Goethe that Wilhelm Röntgen thought he had gone insane when he first discovered x rays and that the talented chemist Maria Goeppert-Mayer struggled for legitimacy for her entire career-but was nevertheless billed as a “mother” rather than a scientist when she won the Nobel Prize. He describes the brilliance-and shortsightedness-of Dmitri Mendeleev the rise of the semiconductor industry the connection of wars to the discovery of new elements the widespread cadmium poisoning that took place in 20th-century Japan and the practice in colonial America of putting a silver coin in a milk jug to prevent the milk from spoiling. The story of how we came to discover and understand the elements touches on topics that range from the hot centers of stars to human folly.

But as Sam Kean details in The Disappearing Spoon, behind those lettered boxes lies a sordid past. Students, teachers, and burgeoning science buffs will love learning about the history behind the chemistry.Few of us would ever associate the periodic table of the elements with high intrigue. The fascinating tales in The Disappearing Spoon follow elements on the table as they play out their parts in human history, finance, mythology, conflict, the arts, medicine, and the lives of the (frequently) mad scientists who discovered them.Īdapted for a middle grade audience, the young readers edition of THE DISAPPEARING SPOON offers the material in a simple, easy-to-follow format, with approximately 20 line drawings and sidebars throughout.

The periodic table is a crowning scientific achievement, but it's also a treasure trove of adventure, greed, betrayal, and obsession.

Why did Gandhi hate iodine (I, 53)? Why did the Japanese kill Godzilla with missiles made of cadmium (Cd, 48)? How did radium (Ra, 88) nearly ruin Marie Curie's reputation? And why did tellurium (Te, 52) lead to the most bizarre gold rush in history?

A young readers adaptation of the New York Times bestselling book, THE DISAPPEARING SPOON, chronicling the extraordinary human history of the periodic table.

The disappearing spoon