This is another book store browse find. It was in the discount section, and I ultimately decided to buy it because a friend of mine mentioned that she was taking some courses to learn more about her job, which deals with chemicals. Basically, she inspired me to learn more about what everything is made of.
The book is broken into pleasant sections. The first section is elements 1-56, where you get the name of the element, its symbol, atomic weight, atomic number, color, melting and boiling point, and when it was first identified. You are also given a brief history, additional facts, and sometimes an interesting anecdote. The next section is elements 57-71, the lanthanides. They all have the same number of electrons in the outer shell, and they have a lot of similarities so these elements aren’t given as much detail in their individual sections. They appear as the top row of that separate section you see in the periodic table. The third section is elements 73-94. The format of this section is like that of the first section, each element is discussed in greater detail. Lab created elements, those that do not exist in nature and only exist for short periods of time in a lab setting, are explained in section four. Two of these elements were only just added to the periodic table in 2011, and no new elements have been discovered or added to it since. The book concludes with a very brief section mentioning how we would go about finding additional elements.
I learned a lot from this book. I would recommend it, but if you really need to acquire a great deal of knowledge, I would suggest getting a textbook. This is more for someone who wants to read for fun. Additionally, I am glad that I picked this because it reminded me about a book on my shelf that I haven’t read in a really long time that I now want to go back to. It might be coming soon to this blog.
Nonfiction and Nonsense 