The Disappearing Spoon -- a book review

The Disappearing Spoon by Sam Kean is a history of the development of the Periodic Table of Elements, the basic map chemists use to understand the makeup of all things in our univers.

I know. I know. Some people find history and science boring. The complete title of this book is The Disappearing Spoon: And Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World from the Periodic Table of the Element. It's anything but "boring."

Take the German chemist Robert Bunsen. You remember the Bunsen burner in your high school chemistry class. This book clarifies that although Herr Bunsen didn’t invent the Bunsen Burner. He did improve it by adding a valve that controlled oxygen flow which made a more efficient flame. That allowed him to heat elements causing them to emit unique bands of colored light. Take a disused cigar box and two telescope eye pieces and, voilà! He had a spectroscope. He was also into experimenting with cyanide and building working models of geysers in the middle of his lab.

Speaking of Bunsen Burners, when I was a high school sophomore in chemistry class, I discovered that you could use a Bunsen Burner to heat a test tube topped with a cork and shoot that cork with great accuracy at anyone within about eight feet.

Chemistry class! Ah, yes, I remember Mr. Rice’s high school chemistry class. It was the fall of 1963 and I was new to the town, to the school, and definitely to Mr. Rice. He was a very big man, over six feet tall and over 300 pounds, no hair. That first day, he set out the following facts about himself and his class. He declared the United States may be a democracy but his class was not. His rules were the rules and students had no say. He could swear in six languages. He was qualified to teach every class available at our high school except Home Economics and Girls P.E.

He announced that he was required by the State of Oklahoma to issue the approved text book, which he promptly did. Then he said we would not be using said book and he recommended that we turn them back in before that day’s class ended rather than keeping them in our lockers and risking damage or loss for which we would be responsible for the replacement cost.

If he mentioned the very large Periodic Table hanging on the wall, I don’t remember it.

He passed out a list of the 103 elements on the table at that time complete with its one- or two-letter chemical symbol, atomic number, and valence which we would then be tested on. In order to pass the class, we must pass the test. We would have as many chances to pass the test as we needed. We could miss three elements the first time we took the test and pass. The second time, we could miss two. The third and any succeeding attempts would require perfection. Yes, you guessed it. I passed on the third attempt.

This whole process was to help us do equations quickly using the information we’d memorized. Until I read The Disappearing Spoon by Sam Kean, I didn’t understand that all this information was readily available on the Periodic Table of Elements which was there on the wall of that classroom. Not that that would have helped. As big as it was, I sat too far from it to easily read it. And you had to know where to look on it to find any particular element. Not to mention that the one- and two-letter chemical symbols were printed large while the name of the element was a smaller font and the rest of the information was even smaller.

Many of those symbols had seemingly nothing to do with the element they stood for. I mean, okay. “H” for hydrogen. “Li” for Lithium. But “Na” for Sodium? “K” for Potassium? “Au” for Gold for heaven’s sake! And they were not organized alphabetically by symbol or name.

I don’t remember if Mr. Rice explained how to use the Periodic Table of Elements. Perhaps he did, but I was too overwhelmed to hear him, much less, process and use that information. So it was memorization for me!

I should have read this book before I had that chemistry class!

Reading Kean’s descriptions of some of the elements and how they could effect a human’s physical self was, if not frightening, certainly sobering.

During that year in chemistry class, we had a unit on “unknowns.” Mr. Rice would give us a sample to be identified – a powder, a liquid, a solid. He handed out instructions for a series of tests we were use to identify the element. Rather like recipes. I quickly discovered that I could just taste whatever it was and identify it. Of course I first tested the sample for arsenic, arsenous, cyanide, and acetate. The first three sounded dangerous to me. And one taste of acetate taught me not to taste it again. (If you taste acetate, you won’t be able to spit for a week. Think biting into a green persimmon.)

Apparently I wasn't the first to think I could identify an element by taste. Kean specifically says: “A live body is so complicated … that if you inject a random element into your bloodstream or liver or pancreas, there’s almost no telling what will happen. 
...when it comes to the periodic table, it’s best to keep our mouths shut. ”

When Mr. Rice discovered some of us were using this unsafe method of testing, he took steps to dissuade us from continuing to use it. He said he put urine in some of the samples of unknowns. Now we didn’t know if he actually did, but I for one discontinued that particular method of testing.

My favorite story in The Disappearing Spoon is a cautionary tale about a Detroit high school student who, in the 1990s, for an Eagle Scout project, built a nuclear reactor in the potting shed in his mother’s backyard.

No spoilers here.

There are so many good stories about scientists and, shall we say, science enthusiasts in this book. It’s definitely worth a read.