Dalton Ellis
Adv. Chemistry
Mr. Lawson 6th
1/05/16
Reading Assignment I choose The Disappearing Spoon, by Sam Kean because I read short reviews on all the books on the reading list, and this one seemed the most interesting. After doing some research on the boom I found that it had great reviews online, and was one of the top ten most recommended books in the chemistry genre. This book caught my attention because it gave a brief history of many of the elements, and I was keen to learn how to incorporate chemistry into my daily life. Synopsis- The Disappearing Spoon starts off with an introduction in which Sam Kean narrates how he fell in love with the science of chemistry, because as a child he broke open mercury thermometers. Each of the …show more content…
I found this to be very useful as many of the chemistry stories and scientific explanations went right over my head. The book covers every aspect of science that I could think of.
So much of what I learned while reading this book involved much more than just chemistry. I learned about history, alchemy, astrohistory, math, geology, and mythology. At times it seemed as if I was reading a textbook, with how much information there was. I was surprised at the fact that I never got bored while reading the book. There was always some new information that grasped my attention.
Some of the things I leaned that relate to chemistry are that antimony pentaflouride mixed with hydrofluoric acid produces a super acid that is 100,000 billion billion billion times more potent than stomach acid. I learned what the longest word in the English language is. It’s also known as “titan” and is the name of a protein. The book went over every possible aspect that the periodic table could be used for. The book discusses the ancient uses of antimony, and how they can be used as laxatives. I also learned that there was gaps in the periodic table at one point, and this is because some of the elements were unstable and could not be found in nature. They had to be artificially created in a
Adv. Chemistry
Mr. Lawson 6th
1/05/16
Reading Assignment I choose The Disappearing Spoon, by Sam Kean because I read short reviews on all the books on the reading list, and this one seemed the most interesting. After doing some research on the boom I found that it had great reviews online, and was one of the top ten most recommended books in the chemistry genre. This book caught my attention because it gave a brief history of many of the elements, and I was keen to learn how to incorporate chemistry into my daily life. Synopsis- The Disappearing Spoon starts off with an introduction in which Sam Kean narrates how he fell in love with the science of chemistry, because as a child he broke open mercury thermometers. Each of the …show more content…
I found this to be very useful as many of the chemistry stories and scientific explanations went right over my head. The book covers every aspect of science that I could think of.
So much of what I learned while reading this book involved much more than just chemistry. I learned about history, alchemy, astrohistory, math, geology, and mythology. At times it seemed as if I was reading a textbook, with how much information there was. I was surprised at the fact that I never got bored while reading the book. There was always some new information that grasped my attention.
Some of the things I leaned that relate to chemistry are that antimony pentaflouride mixed with hydrofluoric acid produces a super acid that is 100,000 billion billion billion times more potent than stomach acid. I learned what the longest word in the English language is. It’s also known as “titan” and is the name of a protein. The book went over every possible aspect that the periodic table could be used for. The book discusses the ancient uses of antimony, and how they can be used as laxatives. I also learned that there was gaps in the periodic table at one point, and this is because some of the elements were unstable and could not be found in nature. They had to be artificially created in a