An Encyclopedia of Elements Featuring Beautiful Photographs of the 118 Elements That Form the WorldIncludes the New Element "Nihonium"!
This book introduces all 118 fundamental elements with abundant, beautiful full-color photographs.A bestseller with over 1.2 million copies sold worldwide and 300,000 copies in Japan.
This book is the most comprehensive portrait of all the elements in the universe, an encyclopedia of the fundamental building blocks of the cosmos.For each element, alongside its pure form, representative examples of compounds and applied products found in our daily lives are presented with beautiful photographs.The explanatory text, based on scientific knowledge, is full of humor and shares surprising anecdotes about the discovery, properties, and uses of each element.Detailed scientific data is also included, and the beautiful periodic table at the end is a must-see.This book, with its three facets as a "humorous science essay," a "beautiful photo collection," and a "collection of the latest element data," is an essential read for researchers, educators, libraries, junior high and high school students, and all science enthusiasts.
〈Endorsements〉Oliver Sacks(Neurologist, author of "The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat" and "Uncle Tungsten")Theodore Gray, the author, has a passionate devotion to the periodic table, and his collection rivals that of any museum. With his unique wit and erudition, and above all with his stunning photographs, he teaches us about the unique properties and uses of the elements—from the mundane to the bizarre—with endlessly fascinating examples. Beautiful to look at and a pleasure to read, this book is more than just a guide to the elements. It is a revelation that will profoundly change the way you see the very stuff that makes up our world.
Roald Hoffmann(Chemist, Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1981)This book of elements, in both style and substance, makes all other books on the subject seem pale by comparison. The photographs, beautifully arranged with great flair against black backgrounds, are superb. In the short captions accompanying them, Gray wields his chosen words to depict the uses of the elements, delve into their history, and even offer sharp commentary on the world. I found it a thoroughly delightful experience.
〈Introduction〉The periodic table is a universal catalog of everything you can drop on your foot. There are things in the world, like light and love and logic and time, that are not on the periodic table, but you can’t drop them on your foot. The Earth, and this book, and your foot, everything that can be perceived and detected, is made of elements. Your foot is mostly oxygen, with a goodly amount of carbon thrown in to make the organic molecular structure. That makes you, by definition, a type of carbon-based life form. (If you are reading this and you are not a carbon-based life form—well, welcome to our planet! And if you have feet, please try not to drop this book on them.)
Oxygen is a colorless gas, but three-fifths of your body weight is oxygen. How can that be? Elements have two faces—their face in pure form, and their face when they have combined with other elements to make various compounds. Oxygen is indeed a gas in its pure state, but when it reacts with silicon, it makes solid silicate minerals, the main constituents of the Earth’s crust. When oxygen combines with hydrogen and carbon, it can make anything from water to carbon monoxide to sugar. No matter how different the appearance of the compound is from pure oxygen, the oxygen atoms are still in there. And the oxygen atoms can always be recovered as pure gas. But (barring nuclear decay) the oxygen atoms themselves never break down into simpler things. That property of indivisibility is what makes an element an element.
In this book, I have tried to show you both faces of all the elements. First, you will see a large photograph of the pure element (all that are physically photographable). On the facing page, you can see how that element exists and is used in the world—its characteristic compounds and applied products. Now, before we go to the individual elements, let’s take a look at the periodic table as a whole and talk about what it is.