The Disappearing Spoon

Get hundreds more LitCharts at www.litcharts.com The Disappearing Spoon (Nearly) Everything and James M. Russell’s Elementary: The INTRODUCTION Periodic Table Explained. Looking more broadly, many other books cover science and its history for a lay audience. These BRIEF BIOGRAPHY OF SAM KEAN include Richard Holmes’s The Age of Wonder, which chronicles Sam Kean was born in Sioux Falls, South Dakota and is very the boom of scientific research in the 18th and 19th centuries; proud of his hometown. Kean earned a bachelor’s degree in Carl Sagan’s Cosmos: A Personal Voyage, which accompanied the English and physics at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities famous TV series of the same name; and Richard Rhodes’s The and a master’s degree in library science at Catholic University Making of the Atomic Bomb, which focuses on some of the same of America. The Disappearing Spoon is his first book and it was material that appears in The Disappearing Spoon. both a critical and commercial success. It became a bestseller and was nominated by the Royal Society as one of the top 10 KEY FACTS science books of 2010. Kean’s other books similarly focus on making science accessible to a general audience, often by using • Full Title: The Disappearing Spoon: And Other True Tales of entertaining and unexpected stories from the history of Madness, Love, and the History of the World from the science. Along with Kean’s four books, he writes for magazines Periodic Table of the Elements such as The Atlantic and The New York Times Magazine. He also • Where Written: Washington, D.C. regularly appears on the radio and gives guest lectures across • When Published: 2010 the world. He lives in Washington, D.C. • Literary Period: Contemporary • Genre: Nonfiction; opP Science HISTORICAL CONTEXT • Setting: The book spans the history of the universe from the Many historical events are covered in the novel, beginning with Big Bang to the present; many of its stories take place from what is arguably the very first historical ve ent—the Big Bang. the 19th century onward, after the periodic table was Kean traces the history of the universe, along with our galaxy invented. and solar system, detailing how Earth and the other planets • Point of View: Third Person were formed. He also provides an account of the speculation around how the dinosaurs died out. Jumping ahead in time, EXTRA CREDIT Kean mentions scenes from Ancient Greece, such as the Spartans’ (largely unsuccessful) attempt to use chemical Changing Minds. In interviews, Kean has stated that he was weapons against the Athenians. He also considers how Plato’s aware that many readers probably have an automatically theory of the forms relates to the contemporary scientific unfavorable view of the periodic table, imagining it to be boring. understanding of the elements. The majority of the book, He hopes that The Disappearing Spoon will convince them however, focuses on the period between the Age of the otherwise. Enlightenment and the present—particularly from the 19th century onwards, as this is when the periodic table was Failed Experiment. Although The Disappearing Spoon received devised. Key historical events that the book covers within this generally positive reviews, the review featured in The New York period include the Australian gold rush, the discovery of DNA, Times protested that the book doesn’t “really unpack how the and the Manhattan Project, in which the first nuclear bomb was periodic table works.” developed. RELATED LITERARY WORKS PLOT SUMMARY Only one year after the publication of The Disappearing Spoon, In the introduction, Kean recalls how he was fascinated by the another popular science book focusing on the periodic table of mercury inside thermometers as a child. Discovering mercury elements was also published. This one, Hugh Aldersey- was an element prompted his interest in the periodic table. In Williams’s Periodic Tales: A Cultural History of the Elements, from The Disappearing Spoon, Kean hopes to tell stories about the Arsenic to Zinc, also provides information about the elements ways in which the periodic table interacts with human culture. through quirky, unexpected facts and historical narratives. Most people are familiar with the table but they might be Other popular science books about the periodic table include intimidated or uninspired by it. Kean explains basic features of Tim James’s Elemental: How the Periodic Table Can Explain the table, such as the fact that every element is necessary—if a ©2020 LitCharts LLC v.007 www.LitCharts.com Page 1 Get hundreds more LitCharts at www.litcharts.com single one were removed, the whole thing would no longer which later became the basis of using computer calculations in make sense. He also explains that for the elements, “geography scientific research. is destiny,” meaning that their position on the periodic table Later on, during the Cold War, there was a competitive race determines what properties they have. between the U.S. and the Soviet Union to find new elements Kean then explains the structure of atoms, which are made up and name them. Kean discusses two scientists, Linus Pauling of particles called protons, neutrons, and electrons. He and Emilio Segrè, who—despite being enormously describes the different parts of the period table, which contain talented—are remembered for committing two of the most groups of elements such as noble gases, halogens, rare earths, awful mistakes in scientific history. While mistakes can often acids, alkalis, and transition metals. advance scientific progress, the errors aulingP and Segrè made Kean states that life on Earth is carbon-based but that some were decidedly not that kind of mistake. science fiction writers have speculated alien life-forms might be Elements can often be poisonous. In early 20th-century Japan, based on silicon, the element below carbon on the periodic cadmium from the Kamioka mines infused nearby rice fields table. While this is plausible to a degree, silicon also has and led to local people experiencing an illness known as “itai- properties that make it an unlikely basis for life-forms. Kean itai” or “ouch-ouch.” Meanwhile, elements like thallium and also discusses germanium, an element which, together with polonium have been used to deliberately poison people. In the silicon, had a chance to become widely used in electronic 1990s, a young American named David Hahn poisoned himself technology. Ultimately, silicon won (hence the name “Silicon by trying to build a nuclear reactor in his backyard. Valley”). Many elements also have great medicinal use but they can be Kean tells the story of Robert Bunsen, after whom the Bunsen unpredictable when they interact with the human body—for burner is named, used a spectroscope to study the light better or worse. For example, when a U.S. candidate for Senate, produced by elements, which led to huge advances in them. Stan Jones, ingested silver for its health benefits, he ended up However, it was only after this that Dmitri Mendeleev just turning blue. Two scientists, Gerhard Domagk and Louis developed the first ersionv of the periodic table, which would Pasteur, broke scientific rules yb administering drugs that were be subject to much revision in later years. still in an experimental phase to patients in an informal context. For a long time, scientists assumed that all the elements had Fortunately, in both cases the risk paid off and the patients always existed. However, this theory then shifted to an were healed. Similarly, Pasteur’s research on drugs that understanding that at the very beginning of the universe, prevented bacteria from multiplying led to the development of during the Big Bang, the only elements that existed were antibiotics. hydrogen, helium, and lithium. All the rest of the elements were Elements can be unpredictable and deceptive. For example, formed inside stars. The solar system was formed when a star modern prosthetics were developed when a Swedish doctor imploded and exploded again, becoming a supernova, and named Per-Ingvar Brånemark attached a titanium window to released a dust cloud that formed into our sun and planets. The view the open inside of a rabbit, then realized that the cells of age of Earth was first accurately calculated by a graduate the rabbit’s skin bonded to the titanium. As a result of this student named Clair Patterson, who used the system of finding, titanium came to be used in prosthetics. radioactive dating to produce the number 4.55 billion years. Beyond the chemical elements themselves, Kean also Kean shifts to discuss chemical warfare, which was used all the addresses the personal and professional obstacles that way back in Ancient Greece but only became advanced during scientists have faced over the years in the midst of working World War I. One German scientist, Fritz Haber, dedicated with these elements. Marie Curie was one of the most himself to developing particularly brutal chlorine and bromine important scientists in history, although she nearly missed weapons that had horrifying effects on victims. He also becoming a scientist at all thanks to the restrictions on developed a method of capturing nitrogen that was used to women’s education in Warsaw, Poland, where she was born. make ammonia, a fertilizer that has grown food for billions of Curie won two Nobel Prizes, one in Physics and one in people around the world. Chemistry, and she shaped the earliest understandings of In 1939, the American physicist Luis Alvarez heard about the radioactivity. Lise Meitner, meanwhile, was an Austrian German scientist Otto Hann’s research into nuclear fission, the scientist of Jewish descent who had a productive collaboration process of splitting a uranium atom. At the time, understanding with a German colleague, Otto Hahn, until he betrayed her by of radioactivity was still at a fairly early stage.

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