The Disappearing Spoon

Back when I was writing about Lavoisier, I mentioned that a casual reader may get more out of a history of the period rather than Lavoisier's actual writings.  Well, I found one that I can recommend.  It's called 'The Disappearing Spoon', by Sam Kean [Amazon link]. 
The book is a walk through the periodic tables.  Most (if not every) element gets a story and some of them are wildly entertaining.  Take for instance, the lengths that Neils Bohr went, to hide some golden Nobel prizes from the Nazis:

On the day the Nazis came to Copenhagen, a Hungarian chemist named Georgy de Hevesy (he would one day win a Nobel of his own) was working in Bohr's lab. He wrote later, "I suggested that we should bury the medal(s)," but Bohr thought no, the Germans would dig up the grounds, the garden, search everywhere in the building. Too dangerous.
So Hevesy's thoughts turned to chemistry. Maybe he could make the medals disappear. He took the first one, he says, and "I decided to dissolve it. While the invading forces marched in the streets of Copenhagen, I was busy dissolving Laue's and also James Franck's medals."

They put the dissolved remainder into some beakers and stashed them away.  The Nazis ransacked the labs but ignored the beakers.  Pretty clever, eh?  The best part though, after the war, they precipitated the gold out and had the medals recast.  That's wonderful!

As I'm going through the Great Books, I'm recognizing where my strengths and weaknesses are with different types of books.  The science and math readings (and the Kant!) are not going to be my friends.  After reading 'The Disappearing Spoon', I have a much better grasp on chemistry and the people who have done so much of the work over the past few centuries.
Highly recommended.   

Elements of Chemistry - Lavoisier

I skipped writing a bio for Lavoisier.  You can read one here, if you're interested.  Of note, he is considered by many to be the 'father of chemistry'.  After reading part one of 'Elements of Chemistry', it's not hard to see why.

I won't go into great depth here.  'Elements' is very much in the vein of Great Books of basic science and math texts.  The usefulness of reading these as a layperson is debatable.  I'm of the opinion that if you're really interested in the early days of chemistry, that you're better off reading a history of the period rather than Lavoisier's actual work. 
But I don't mean to turn people away from the work.  'Elements' is very readable.  It becomes repetitious with experiments, but at least they're easy to follow.

Having said that, there are some things to appreciate.  The book opens with Lavoisier explaining why molecular differences change with temperature and how that makes the difference between solids, liquids and gases.  He also explains the role that pressure plays in liquid states.  It seems obvious once I'd read it, but this was honestly new to me.
It really is amazing the things that Lavoisier did.  I was reminded again and again of Lucretius and the poetic atomic theories.  Lavoisier actually took various substances and tested and experimented to see what would happen with them.  This meant heating and boiling.  This meant testing quantities of trapped air.  It meant weighing things.  And so on and so on.
'Elements' was published so that Lavoisier could get his findings out to other chemists.  I'm sure they redid his experiments and compared results.  Chemistry was put on a solid footing. 

Readings for October

Two pieces for September.

Mill: Representative Government (Ch1-6) link
Lavoisier: Elements of Chemistry (Part 1) link

The Mill is enjoyable (as expected).  I haven't started the Lavoisier yet.