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The Disappearing Spoon
Sam Kean
And Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World from the Periodic Table of the Elements
Little, Brown and Co.
July 2010
On Sale: July 12, 2010
400 pages
ISBN: 0316051640
EAN: 9780316051644
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction
The Periodic Table is one of man's crowning scientific
achievements. But it's also a treasure trove of stories of
passion, adventure, betrayal, and obsession. The infectious
tales and astounding details in THE DISAPPEARING SPOON
follow carbon, neon, silicon, and gold as they play out
their parts in human history, finance, mythology, war, the
arts, poison, and the lives of the (frequently) mad
scientists who discovered them. We learn that Marie Curie used to provoke jealousy in
colleagues' wives when she'd invite them into closets to see
her glow-in-the-dark experiments. And that Lewis and Clark
swallowed mercury capsules across the country and their
campsites are still detectable by the poison in the ground.
Why did Gandhi hate iodine? Why did the Japanese kill
Godzilla with missiles made of cadmium? And why did
tellurium lead to the most bizarre gold rush in history? From the Big Bang to the end of time, it's all in THE
DISAPPEARING SPOON.
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