“The Elements: A Very Short Introduction” by Philip Ball

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Rating: 3/5 Stars

An interesting introduction to the elements: from the idea of elements as an ideal form of a material, to the realization that much of the world is made up of many elements. The discovery of several elements, how they become organized and their importance to society and civilization are also covered in this brief book.

Chapter one gives a brief introduction in the history of elements. While Aristotle’s idea of four ‘elements’ is probably well known, the chapter shows it that the elements at the time were considered ‘ideal’ forms for objects in the work and were made up of mixtures of the elements in different proportions. Metallurgy would introduce a few variations to the idea of such ‘elements’ before the modern idea of chemical elements would take shape.

Chapter two looks at the role Antoine Laurent Lavoisier would have on the definition of elements. It would surround the discovery and nature of Oxygen. Air was at the time considered an element, but it has become recognized that different ‘kinds’ of air existed, with differed on whether the air could support life, keep fire alight, be ‘bad’ for health and so on. Originally, the idea of phlogiston would be used, a supposed substance given off when fire burned. But Lavoisier and others would challenge that idea with an element, oxygen, that aided combustion and would be vital to life. The rest of the chapter would cover the role of oxygen in life, and how it is constantly consumed and created on Earth.

Chapter three looks at the role Gold would play in civilizations. Coveted by many, its very inertness and reluctance to interact with other materials (unlike other metals) would make it precious as a store of value. The desire for gold would lead to advances in metallurgy to extract and purify it.

Chapter four looks at the various ways the now numerous elements are organized. Chemistry would show that the various elements combined in fixed amounts, leading to the idea of organizing them based on their chemical relationships and also their weights relative to hydrogen, the lightest element known. By making and proving (or disproving) assumptions on how atoms are organized, we would eventually get the picture of an atom as one containing a nucleus consisting of protons and neutrons surrounded by a cloud of electrons. Mendeleyev would then become one of the first to organize the elements into a proper table and use it to predict the properties of elements that haven’t been discovered.

Chapter five looks at the synthesis of new elements. Radioactivity was discovered and found to be able to transmute elements, changing them into new elements one proton or neutron at a time. But the discovery that some heavy atoms can split into two smaller ones with the release of energy would bring about the atomic age and the nuclear bomb and, later, the ability to fuse smaller atoms together to release even more energy via thermonuclear reactions. It would also lead to a race to create ever heavier elements.

Chapter six looks at isotopes, atoms that have the same number of protons but different number of neutrons. Among the isotopes looked at included Carbon-14 and various isotopes of Uranium and other heavy elements for dating rocks and organisms, and other isotopes that can be used to determine ancient climates via the ratio of isotopes and in medicine by using short-lived radioisotopes that can be detected by medical equipment.

Chapter seven would look at a few elements that have become important to modern civilization: silicon, for producing transistors which, in their billions, are the hearts of computer chips, palladium, which act as a catalyst for many chemical processes and had a role in the infamous ‘cold fusion’ controversy, the ‘rare earths’ which drive much of the LCD and related lighting industries and the Nobel gas argon, which plays a role in lamps and in transporting other gases, since it does not take part in reactions and so does not contaminate chemical reactions.

Book read from 2019/11/28 to 2019/12/11