LD son loved this book!
The "Mystery of the Periodic Table" is that it makes learning fun! My son really likes this book! It keeps you entertained and is much easier to read than a typical old boring chemistry textbook! Highly recommend as a first step in introducing the periodic table to any child!
good popular science
By putting over 3,000 years of faces on the search for the elemental principles -- from the Greek philosopher Anaximander, who held that all the material world was made of four "elements", Earth, Air, Fire, and Water; to teams of modern scientists who race to create new elements -- Benjamin Wiker has moved chemistry off the shelf of dry-and-dusty arcania and given the reader a gum-shoe tale filled with odd and interesting characters. This book is an excellent remedy for people who think the sciences were hatched in university laboratories, or born the test-tube children of egg-headed professors. Tracing the theories of philosophers, alchemists, and scientists, making acquaintance with men of all walks and many nationalities, whose only common trait was their persistent desire to peer ever deeper into the nature of things, Wiker not only outlines the genealogy of the Periodic Table of Elements, but, so doing, introduces his reader to the principles of theoretical and practical science, to the history of the scientific method, and even inklings of atomic theory. This book will be accessible, and of interest, to a wide range of readers: those with no science background can still follow the general story with ease, while even the reader well-versed in high-school level chemistry has probably never encountered the history of modern chemistry synthesized with such clarity and appeal.
About The Mystery of the Periodic Table (Living History Library) detail
- Amazon Sales Rank: #26074 in Books
- Published on: 2003-05
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Binding: Paperback
- 170 pages
