2 更多免费电子书请搜索「慧眼看」www.huiyankan.com 北京市版权局著作权合同登记号 图字：01-2019-7939 Material from: ‘Nature: research articles [UK] part of Springer Nature GmBh, 1476-4687 (ISSN)．Translated & Complied by Nature 自然科研, reproduced with permission of SNCSC’. 版权所有，侵权必究。侵权举报电话： 010-62782989 13701121933 图书在版编目（CIP）数据 自然的音符：118种化学元素的故事／英国施普林格·自然旗下的 自然科研编；Nature自然科研编译．—北京：清华大学出版社， 2020.1 书名原文：‘In Your Element’from Nature Chemistry ISBN 978-7-302-54186-8 Ⅰ．①自… Ⅱ．①英…②N… Ⅲ．①化学元素－普及读物 Ⅳ．①O611-49 中国版本图书馆CIP数据核字（2019）第256405号 责任编辑：刘 杨 装帧设计：意匠文化·丁奔亮 责任校对：刘玉霞 责任印制：杨 艳 3 出版发行：清华大学出版社 网 址：http://www.tup.com.cn, http://www.wqbook.com 地 址：北京清华大学学研大厦A座 邮 编：100084 社 总 机：010-62770175 邮 购：010-62786544 投稿与读者服务：010-62776969, [email protected] 质量反馈：010-62772015, [email protected] 印 装 者：小森印刷（北京）有限公司 经 销：全国新华书店 开 本：165mm×235mm 印 张：24.75 字 数：354千字 版 次：2020年2月第1版 印 次：2020年2月第1次印刷 定 价：98.00元 产品编号：085620-01 4 更多免费电子书请搜索「慧眼看」www.huiyankan.com 作者简介 自然科研（Narture Research）提供一系列服务于科研界的优质 产品与服务，包括了期刊、数据库和研究者服务等，例如《自然》及冠 名“自然”的科学期刊。自然科研是全球领先的科学、教育和专业出版 机构——施普林格·自然（Springer Nature）的一部分。 “Nature自然科研”官方微信订阅号创立于2014年，旨在服务中 国科研共同体。我们关注中国及全球科研进展，发布来自《自然》及冠 名“自然”的科学期刊最及时的资讯内容、专家评论和研究亮点，以及 自然科研旗下的各类科研服务。 Nature自然科研 官方微信订阅号 5 6 更多免费电子书请搜索「慧眼看」www.huiyankan.com Preface Starting in the inaugural issue of Nature Chemistry in April 2009 and throughout its first ten years, the last page of each month’s journal was occupied by the ‘In Your Element’ (IYE) column, which explored - one element at a time -the building blocks that make up everything around us. There are currently 118 known elements, and we also included the two rather special isotopes of hydrogen: deuterium and tritium. This means that the IYE feature happened to run for exactly ten years, spanning 120 issues of the journal. With fortuitous timing, it came to an end in March 2019 during the International Year of the Periodic Table (https://www.iypt2019.org/), which celebrates the 150th anniversary of Dmitri Mendeleev’s early version of the chart that would become one of the most ubiquitous emblems of chemistry. This book is the collection of these 120 IYE essays. From the very beginning there was no set formula for these articles; they were simply intended to be informative and entertaining stories about an element. They gather together a wide variety of snippets, ranging from historical and etymological accounts to chemical characteristics to personal anecdotes, and we have learnt a great deal about the periodic table, and its content, along the way. 7 With its relatively simple appearance - all of the elements catalogued in order of increasing atomic number, arranged in neat rows and columns that reflect similarities and trends in their behaviour - it’s perhaps easy today to take the periodic table for granted. Yet the familiar chart has been painstakingly shaped by the work of many scientists. Although Mendeleev is widely recognized as the creator of the periodic table, he wasn’t the only one - or even the first one - to have noticed a periodicity in the elements’ physical or chemical behaviour, and to attempt to arrange them in a manner that made scientific sense. But his 1869 version exhibited noteworthy features: it included all the 63 then-known elements as well as several gaps for elements that he believed existed but hadn’t yet been discovered. Some of those ‘missing’elements did indeed turn up within a matter of years - and exhibited properties that closely matched the ones Mendeleev had predicted based on their location in the table, lending great credibility to his periodic placement. It would take nearly 7 decades, however, to fill the last of his blank tiles, in a manner that would represent a fundamental departure in element discovery: rather than being found in nature, technetium - a highly radioactive element in the middle of the d-block - was created artificially and finally identified in 1937. The discovery of some other elements initially caused classification problems, and prompted expansions of the table. The noble gases for example - of which krypton, neon and xenon were discovered within just weeks of each other - had no place on Mendeleev’s chart for several puzzling years until 8 更多免费电子书请搜索「慧眼看」www.huiyankan.com they were finally given their own column in 1902. Another major adjustment came in the mid-1940s when Glenn Seaborg moved the actinide series below that of the lanthanides; this placement would guide scientists to the discovery of elements beyond uranium. The table as we know it is still not set in stone. The IYE essays tell of an on-going debate on the occupancy of group 3 - should lanthanum and actinium, or lutetium and lawrencium, sit below scandium and yttrium? Can lawrencium even be considered a p-block element? The rare earths proved to be a trove of discovery quirks (despite their name these elements aren’t all that rare in the Earth’s crust; the most common one, cerium, is nearly as abundant as copper). Johan Gadolin, for example, guessed the existence of a new element, albeit reluctantly as he feared the rare earths were ‘becoming far too numerous’ - this very element is now known as gadolinium. A blunder caused some confusion between two minerals: in 1843 Carl Mosander analysed erbia and terbia in search of two new elements. A mix-up in his samples, however, meant that he had isolated erbium from terbia and terbium from erbia; the minerals’ names were subsequently swapped. The IYE essays also feature poetic passages: a description of dysprosium - a curse and a blessing - that is borrowed from that of love in La Traviata; a stanza from a poem by Rudyard Kipling entitled 'Cold iron'; and excerpts from Jules Verne’s books in which he had foreseen the use of water as a fuel 9 ‘decomposed into its primitive elements’, and written in praise of aluminium - a light metal that was once more precious than gold. There are quite a few unnerving accounts of early uses of p-block elements that were curbed when toxicity issues became painfully obvious: phosphorus in matches that plagued workers with a bone necrosis called ‘phossy jaw’; mercury causing the neurological disorder now known as ‘mad hatter’disease; the ubiquitous use of lead compounds (including one dubbed ‘lead sugar’). In contrast, bismuth is a bit of an oddity among the heavy metals owing to its low toxicity. Only two tiles to the left, though, sits thallium - the weapon of choice of an English serial killer nicknamed the ‘teacup poisoner’, and an element that should perhaps have remained altogether undiscovered. A number of glowing, radioactive elements also proved dangerously alluring. Initially purported to be a wonder element, radium used to be sprinkled into everything from water to food to cosmetics (presumably making skin glow for all the wrong reasons). Radioactive elements now safely serve a variety of purposes from atomic clocks to geological dating. Some can also be purchased surprisingly easily: americium in smoke detectors and tritium in battery-free luminescent gadgets. The stories of some of the heavier elements are replete with discovery disputes. The controversies were so fierce that they are referred to as ‘transfermium wars’ and a special 10 更多免费电子书请搜索「慧眼看」www.huiyankan.com committee, the Transfermium Working Group, was created to adjudicate claims and attribute names. Those elements at the bottom right corner of the periodic table can - under exactly the right conditions, using equipment that seem straight out of science fiction, and with a lot of patience - be coaxed into fleeting existence by smashing nuclei into each other. Beyond fermium, nuclei cannot be prepared in weighable quantities. Undeterred, scientists have developed special experimental techniques: there is such a thing as one-atom-at-a-time chemistry. Element hunters are currently working on crafting ever heavier nuclei; any synthetic success will prompt a noticeable change in the shape of the periodic table, as there are no blank tiles left on its seven familiar rows. At the other end of the spectrum there are elements that have essentially been around for ever. Hydrogen and helium, for example, appeared only around 380,000 years after the Big Bang. Oxygen played a key role in the origin and evolution of life and nitrogen is intimately implicated in most matters of life and death. Nickel, iron and sulfur are thought to have been used by early forms of life; today most living organisms rely on iron. Another transition metal, iridium -which incidentally adopts the widest known range of oxidation states (from −3 to +9) - can provide clues as to why the dinosaurs died out. The IYE articles have reflected the depth and breadth of the periodic table, and we are extremely grateful to all the writers who have contributed to this feature over the years. We have thoroughly enjoyed it, and we hope you do too. 11 Dr. Anne Pichon Senior Editor, Nature Chemistry Note: this preface is largely based on the editorial published in the March 2019 issue of Nature Chemistry, entitled ‘End of an elemental era’. 12 更多免费电子书请搜索「慧眼看」www.huiyankan.com 序 《自然-化学》（Nature Chemistry）从2009年4月的创刊号开 始，十年以来每期的最后一页都属于“In Your Element”这个专栏， 该专栏每期介绍一种化学元素——这些元素就像积木块一样构成了我们 周围的一切物质。目前已知的元素有118种，另外我们也介绍了两种相 当特别的氢同位素：氘和氚。这就是说，该专栏开办了整整10年，延 续120期，并刚好在2019年3月正式结束，恰逢国际元素周期表年 （https://www.iypt2019.org/）——旨在纪念德米特里·门捷列夫 （Dmitri Mendeleev）早期版本的元素周期表问世150周年，元素周 期表大概已成为化学最普遍的象征之一。 本书是该专栏120篇文章的合集。起初，这些文章并无固定模式， 只是为了分享元素的故事，既增长见识，又寓教于乐。这些文章粹集了 各种珍闻片段，包括元素的历史记述、词源学意义、化学特性和相关的 个人轶事等。一路走来，我们也了解到很多关于元素周期表及其内容的 知识，所获匪浅。 元素周期表看起来相对简单，所有的元素都按原子序数递增排列， 排列有序的行和列反映了元素化学性质的相似性和递变趋势。今天人们 或许很容易认为元素周期表理当如此。然而，这张我们都熟悉的表格却