Download or read book Periodic Tales written by Hugh Aldersey-Williams and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2012-05 with total page 491 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The phenomenal Sunday Times bestseller Periodic Tales by Hugh Andersey-Williams, packed with fascinating stories and unexpected information about the building blocks of our universe. Everything in the universe is made of them, including you. Like you, the elements have personalities, attitudes, talents, shortcomings, stories rich with meaning. Here you'll meet iron that rains from the heavens and noble gases that light the way to vice. You'll learn how lead can tell your future while zinc may one day line your coffin. You'll discover what connects the bones in your body with the Whitehouse in Washington, the glow of a streetlamp with the salt on your dinner table. Unlocking their astonishing secrets and colourful pasts, Periodic Tales is a voyage of wonder and discovery, showing that their stories are our stories, and their lives are inextricable from our own. 'Science writing at its best. A fascinating and beautiful literary anthology, bringing them to life as personalities. If only chemistry had been like this at school. A rich compilation of delicious tales'Matt Ridley, Prospect 'A love letter to the chemical elements. Aldersey-Williams is full of good stories and he knows how to tell them well'Sunday Telegraph 'Great fun to read and an endless fund of unlikely and improbable anecdotes'Financial Times 'The history, science, art, literature and everyday applications of all the elements from aluminium to zinc' The Times Hugh Aldersey-Williams studied natural sciences at Cambridge. He is the author of several books exploring science, design and architecture and has curated exhibitions at the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Wellcome Collection. He lives in Norfolk with his wife and son.
Download or read book The Disappearing Spoon written by Sam Kean and published by Little, Brown. This book was released on 2010-07-12 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From New York Times bestselling author Sam Kean comes incredible stories of science, history, finance, mythology, the arts, medicine, and more, as told by the Periodic Table. Why did Gandhi hate iodine (I, 53)? How did radium (Ra, 88) nearly ruin Marie Curie's reputation? And why is gallium (Ga, 31) the go-to element for laboratory pranksters?* The Periodic Table is a crowning scientific achievement, but it's also a treasure trove of adventure, betrayal, and obsession. These fascinating tales follow every element on the table as they play out their parts in human history, and in the lives of the (frequently) mad scientists who discovered them. THE DISAPPEARING SPOON masterfully fuses science with the classic lore of invention, investigation, and discovery--from the Big Bang through the end of time. *Though solid at room temperature, gallium is a moldable metal that melts at 84 degrees Fahrenheit. A classic science prank is to mold gallium spoons, serve them with tea, and watch guests recoil as their utensils disappear.
Download or read book A Tale of Seven Elements written by Eric Scerri and published by OUP USA. This book was released on 2013-07-18 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In A Tale of Seven Elements, Eric Scerri presents the fascinating history of those seven elements discovered to be mysteriously "missing" from the periodic table in 1913.
Download or read book Anatomies written by Hugh Aldersey-Williams and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2014 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Periodic Table written by Primo Levi and published by Everyman's Library. This book was released on 1996-10-01 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Periodic Table is largely a memoir of the years before and after Primo Levi’s transportation from his native Italy to Auschwitz as an anti-Facist partisan and a Jew. It recounts, in clear, precise, unfailingly beautiful prose, the story of the Piedmontese Jewish community from which Levi came, of his years as a student and young chemist at the inception of the Second World War, and of his investigations into the nature of the material world. As such, it provides crucial links and backgrounds, both personal and intellectual, in the tremendous project of remembrance that is Levi’s gift to posterity. But far from being a prologue to his experience of the Holocaust, Levi’s masterpiece represents his most impassioned response to the events that engulfed him. The Periodic Table celebrates the pleasures of love and friendship and the search for meaning, and stands as a monument to those things in us that are capable of resisting and enduring in the face of tyranny.
Download or read book Superheavy written by Kit Chapman and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2019-06-13 with total page 277 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Shortlisted for the 2020 AAAS/Subaru SB&F Prize for Excellence in Science Books Creating an element is no easy feat. It's the equivalent of firing six trillion bullets a second at a needle in a haystack, hoping the bullet and needle somehow fuse together, then catching it in less than a thousandth of a second – after which it's gone forever. Welcome to the world of the superheavy elements: a realm where scientists use giant machines and spend years trying to make a single atom of mysterious artefacts that have never existed on Earth. From the first elements past uranium and their role in the atomic bomb to the latest discoveries stretching our chemical world, Superheavy will reveal the hidden stories lurking at the edges of the periodic table. Why did the US Air Force fly planes into mushroom clouds? Who won the transfermium wars? How did an earthquake help give Japan its first element? And what happened when Superman almost spilled nuclear secrets? In a globe-trotting adventure that stretches from the United States to Russia, Sweden to Australia, Superheavy is your guide to the amazing science filling in the missing pieces of the periodic table. By the end you'll not only marvel at how nuclear science has changed our lives – you'll wonder where it's going to take us in the future.
Download or read book Wonderful Life with the Elements written by Bunpei Yorifuji and published by No Starch Press. This book was released on 2012-09-12 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the brilliant mind of Japanese artist Bunpei Yorifuji comes Wonderful Life with the Elements, an illustrated guide to the periodic table that gives chemistry a friendly face. In this super periodic table, every element is a unique character whose properties are represented visually: heavy elements are fat, man-made elements are robots, and noble gases sport impressive afros. Every detail is significant, from the length of an element's beard to the clothes on its back. You'll also learn about each element's discovery, its common uses, and other vital stats like whether it floats—or explodes—in water. Why bother trudging through a traditional periodic table? In this periodic paradise, the elements are people too. And once you've met them, you'll never forget them.
Download or read book Emancipation After Hegel written by Todd McGowan and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2019-05-28 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hegel is making a comeback. After the decline of the Marxist Hegelianism that dominated the twentieth century, leading thinkers are rediscovering Hegel’s thought as a resource for contemporary politics. What does a notoriously difficult nineteenth-century German philosopher have to offer the present? How should we understand Hegel, and what does understanding Hegel teach us about confronting our most urgent challenges? In this book, Todd McGowan offers us a Hegel for the twenty-first century. Simultaneously an introduction to Hegel and a fundamental reimagining of Hegel’s project, Emancipation After Hegel presents a radical Hegel who speaks to a world overwhelmed by right-wing populism, authoritarianism, neoliberalism, and economic inequalities. McGowan argues that the revolutionary core of Hegel’s thought is contradiction. He reveals that contradiction is inexorable and that we must attempt to sustain it rather than overcoming it or dismissing it as a logical failure. McGowan contends that Hegel’s notion of contradiction, when applied to contemporary problems, challenges any assertion of unitary identity as every identity is in tension with itself and dependent on others. An accessible and compelling reinterpretation of an often-misunderstood thinker, this book shows us a way forward to a new politics of emancipation as we reconcile ourselves to the inevitability of contradiction and find solidarity in not belonging.
Download or read book Cathedrals of Science written by Patrick Coffey and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2008-08-29 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Cathedrals of Science, Patrick Coffey describes how chemistry got its modern footing-how thirteen brilliant men and one woman struggled with the laws of the universe and with each other. They wanted to discover how the world worked, but they also wanted credit for making those discoveries, and their personalities often affected how that credit was assigned. Gilbert Lewis, for example, could be reclusive and resentful, and his enmity with Walther Nernst may have cost him the Nobel Prize; Irving Langmuir, gregarious and charming, "rediscovered" Lewis's theory of the chemical bond and received much of the credit for it. Langmuir's personality smoothed his path to the Nobel Prize over Lewis. Coffey deals with moral and societal issues as well. These same scientists were the first to be seen by their countries as military assets. Fritz Haber, dubbed the "father of chemical warfare," pioneered the use of poison gas in World War I-vividly described-and Glenn Seaborg and Harold Urey were leaders in World War II's Manhattan Project; Urey and Linus Pauling worked for nuclear disarmament after the war. Science was not always fair, and many were excluded. The Nazis pushed Jewish scientists like Haber from their posts in the 1930s. Anti-Semitism was also a force in American chemistry, and few women were allowed in; Pauling, for example, used his influence to cut off the funding and block the publications of his rival, Dorothy Wrinch. Cathedrals of Science paints a colorful portrait of the building of modern chemistry from the late 19th to the mid-20th century.
Download or read book Periodic Tales written by Hugh Aldersey-Williams and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2011-03-29 with total page 581 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the spirit of A Short History of Nearly Everything comes Periodic Tales. Award-winning science writer Hugh Andersey-Williams offers readers a captivating look at the elements—and the amazing, little-known stories behind their discoveries. Periodic Tales is an energetic and wide-ranging book of innovations and innovators, of superstition and science and the myriad ways the chemical elements are woven into our culture, history, and language. It will delight readers of Genome, Einstein’s Dreams, Longitude, and The Age of Wonder.
Download or read book Donner Dinner Party Nathan Hale s Hazardous Tales 3 written by Nathan Hale and published by Abrams. This book was released on 2013-08-06 with total page 136 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In author-illustrator Nathan Hale’s Donner Dinner Party, discover the shocking and true story of the ill-fated expedition in this Hazardous Tale from the New York Times bestselling graphic novel series. “These books are, quite simply, brilliant. . . . Thrilling, bloody, action-packed stories from American history.” —New York Times In the spring of 1846, a group of families left Illinois and began the long journey toward a new life in California. To save time, they took an ill-advised shortcut—with disastrous consequences. Their story would not take them to California but into history. Bad weather, bad choices, and just plain bad luck forced the pioneers to spend a long, cold winter in the mountains, slowly starving. What they did to stay alive and the lengths that others went to in order to rescue them make this one of the most tragic and infamous stories of the American frontier. Nathan Hale’s Hazardous Tales take young readers into American history with graphic novels that bring the dangerous, bloody, exciting history of America to life. The Revolutionary War and the Civil War, World War I and World War II, the Donner Party, the Marquis de Lafayette, Harriet Tubman, the Alamo, and more all come to life in a way that will excite young readers of history. Nathan Hale’s Hazardous Tales! Read them all—if you dare! One Dead Spy: A Revolutionary War Tale (#1) Big Bad Ironclad!: A Civil War Tale (#2) Donner Dinner Party: A Pioneer Tale (#3) Treaties, Trenches, Mud, and Blood: A World War I Tale (#4) The Underground Abductor: An Abolitionist Tale about Harriet Tubman (#5) Alamo All-Stars: A Texas Tale (#6) Raid of No Return: A World War II Tale of the Doolittle Raid (#7) Lafayette!: A Revolutionary War Tale (#8) Major Impossible: A Grand Canyon Tale (#9) Blades of Freedom: A Tale of Haiti, Napoleon, and the Louisiana Purchase (#10) Cold War Correspondent: A Korean War Tale (#11) Above the Trenches: A WWI Flying Ace Tale (#12)
Download or read book Exploring the Elements written by Isabel Thomas and published by Phaidon Press. This book was released on 2020 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Science meets design in this comprehensive introduction to the chemical elements that make up our universe
Download or read book Periodic Tales written by Hugh Aldersey-Williams and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2011-03-29 with total page 452 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the spirit of A Short History of Nearly Everything comes Periodic Tales. Award-winning science writer Hugh Andersey-Williams offers readers a captivating look at the elements—and the amazing, little-known stories behind their discoveries. Periodic Tales is an energetic and wide-ranging book of innovations and innovators, of superstition and science and the myriad ways the chemical elements are woven into our culture, history, and language. It will delight readers of Genome, Einstein’s Dreams, Longitude, and The Age of Wonder.
Download or read book The Lost Elements written by Marco Fontani and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2015 with total page 577 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the mid-nineteenth century, chemists came to the conclusion that elements should be organized by their atomic weights. However, the atomic weights of various elements were calculated erroneously, and chemists also observed some anomalies in the properties of other elements. Over time, itbecame clear that the periodic table as currently comprised contained gaps, missing elements that had yet to be discovered. A rush to discover these missing pieces followed, and a seemingly endless amount of elemental discoveries were proclaimed and brought into laboratories. It wasn't until thediscovery of the atomic number in 1913 that chemists were able to begin making sense of what did and what did not belong on the periodic table, but even then, the discovery of radioactivity convoluted the definition of an element further. Throughout its formation, the periodic table has seen falseentries, good-faith errors, retractions, and dead ends; in fact, there have been more elemental "discoveries" that have proven false than there are current elements on the table.The Lost Elements: The Shadow Side of Discovery collects the most notable of these instances, stretching from the nineteenth century to the present. The book tells the story of how scientists have come to understand elements, by discussing the failed theories and false discoveries that shaped thepath of scientific progress. Chapters range from early chemists' stubborn refusal to disregard alchemy as legitimate practice, to the effects of the atomic number on discovery, to the switch in influence from chemists to physicists, as elements began to be artificially created in the twentiethcentury. Along the way, Fontani, Costa, and Orna introduce us to the key figures in the development of the periodic table as we know it. And we learn, in the end, that this development was shaped by errors and gaffs as much as by correct assumptions and scientific conclusions.
Download or read book Anatomies written by Hugh Aldersey-Williams and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2013-02-07 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Sunday Times Science Book of the Year, Anatomies by Hugh Aldersey-Williams, author of bestseller Periodic Tales, is a splendidly entertaining journey through the art, science, literature and history of the human body. 'Magnificent, inspired. He writes like a latter-day Montaigne. Stimulating scientific hypotheses, bold philosophic theories, illuminating quotations and curious facts. I recommend it to all' Telegraph ***** 'Splendid, highly entertaining, chock-full of insights ... It inserts fascinating scientific snippets and anecdotes about our organs into the wider history of our changing understanding of our bodies' Sunday Times 'A relentlessly entertaining cultural history of the human body ... brims with fascinating details, infectious enthusiasm ... the terrain he covers is so richly brought to life' Guardian 'Elegant and informative ... For Aldersey-Williams, [the body] is a thing of wonder and a repository of fascinating facts' Mail on Sunday **** In Anatomies, bestselling author Hugh Aldersey-Williams investigates that marvellous, mysterious form: the human body. Providing a treasure trove of surprising facts, remarkable stories and startling information drawn from across history, science, art and literature - from finger-prints to angel physiology, from Isaac Newton's death-mask to the afterlife of Einstein's brain - he explores our relationship with our bodies and investigates our changing attitudes to the extraordinary physical shell we inhabit. 'More than a science book - it's also history, biography and autobiography - Anatomies is writing at its most refined, regardless of genre' Sunday Times Praise for Periodic Tales: 'Science writing at its best ... fascinating and beautiful ... if only chemistry had been like this at school ... to meander through the periodic table with him ... is like going round a zoo with Gerald Durrell ... a rich compilation of delicious tales, but it offers greater rewards, too' Matt Ridley 'Immensely engaging and continually makes one sit up in surprise' Sunday Times 'Splendid ... enjoyable and polished' Observer 'Full of good stories and he knows how to tell them well ... an agreeable jumble of anecdote, reflection and information' Sunday Telegraph 'Great fun to read and an endless fund of unlikely and improbable anecdotes ... sharp and often witty' Financial Times Hugh Aldersey-Williams studied natural sciences at Cambridge. He is the author of several books exploring science, design and architecture and has curated exhibitions at the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Wellcome Collection. His previous book Periodic Tales: The Curious Lives of the Elements was a Sunday Times bestseller and has been published in many languages around the world. He lives in Norfolk with his wife and son.
Download or read book Getting Things Done written by David Allen and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2015-03-17 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book Lifehack calls "The Bible of business and personal productivity." "A completely revised and updated edition of the blockbuster bestseller from 'the personal productivity guru'"—Fast Company Since it was first published almost fifteen years ago, David Allen’s Getting Things Done has become one of the most influential business books of its era, and the ultimate book on personal organization. “GTD” is now shorthand for an entire way of approaching professional and personal tasks, and has spawned an entire culture of websites, organizational tools, seminars, and offshoots. Allen has rewritten the book from start to finish, tweaking his classic text with important perspectives on the new workplace, and adding material that will make the book fresh and relevant for years to come. This new edition of Getting Things Done will be welcomed not only by its hundreds of thousands of existing fans but also by a whole new generation eager to adopt its proven principles.
Download or read book Uncle Tungsten written by Oliver Sacks and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2013-12-11 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Long before Oliver Sacks became a distinguished neurologist and bestselling writer, he was a small English boy fascinated by metals–also by chemical reactions (the louder and smellier the better), photography, squids and cuttlefish, H.G. Wells, and the periodic table. In this endlessly charming and eloquent memoir, the author of The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Awakenings chronicles his love affair with science and the magnificently odd and sometimes harrowing childhood in which that love affair unfolded. In Uncle Tungsten we meet Sacks’ extraordinary family, from his surgeon mother (who introduces the fourteen-year-old Oliver to the art of human dissection) and his father, a family doctor who imbues in his son an early enthusiasm for housecalls, to his “Uncle Tungsten,” whose factory produces tungsten-filament lightbulbs. We follow the young Oliver as he is exiled at the age of six to a grim, sadistic boarding school to escape the London Blitz, and later watch as he sets about passionately reliving the exploits of his chemical heroes–in his own home laboratory. Uncle Tungsten is a crystalline view of a brilliant young mind springing to life, a story of growing up which is by turns elegiac, comic, and wistful, full of the electrifying joy of discovery.
