The Real Story Behind Robert Bunsen

We all know who Robert Bunsen is; he's the guy that made the Bunsen burner, right? Wrong.  Robert Bunsen didn't invent "his" burner.  He just improved the existing model and made it popular in his labs.  His real love was for arsenic.  He was quite interested in arsenic since it has had a lot of popularity as a poison. He worked dedicatedly with the dangerous element, to the point where he had hallucinations and delirium from the disgustingly noxious fumes arsenic gives off.  To help treat himself, he developed iron oxide hydrate, which is still the best antidote for arsenic poisoning today.  You'd think the awful smell and poisoning would stop him from experimenting with arsenic, but you'd be wrong (...again). It took the explosion of a beaker full of arsenic. The shards of glass and the chemicals caused blindness in his right eye for the rest of his life, and such, he retired this strain of research.  If only he was wearing his goggles . . .

After that explosion, Bunsen began studying natural explosions, such as geysers and volcanoes.  He hand-collected the stuff that spewed from both.  He was quite the dare-devil.  He was the one that invented the spectroscope.  As we learned in the last lab we did, spectroscopes show the spectral lines for the elements that give off light.  Each element has its own, specific spectral lines.  In building the spectroscope, him and a student put a prism in a cigar box.  They then attached two lenses from telescopes to look inside.  The only thing that made it hard to see the spectral lines was finding a flame hot enough to heat the metals.  This is where he makes "his" Bunsen burner.  The only thing he changed from a normal burner was add an oxygen valve.  His invention of the spectroscope helped the development of the periodic table, which will be discussed in my next post. Stay tuned!

Atoms Have Soulmates Too!

The first real chapter of the book discusses the far-right column of the periodic table: the noble gases.  Everyone knows they're called "noble gases" because their valence shells are full and don't need to interact with other atoms to get or give electrons.  Sam explains this in a very interesting way by using Plato's The Symposium. Plato said that everything wants to find its compliment.  The most common example is people.  We want to find someone who completes us, with the goal that once we are together, our flaws will be filled in with the other's strengths.  Plato also came up with the concept of "forms". A form is the perfect possible form of something. For example, the perfect example of a dog exists somewhere. It has no flaws, and the subconscious goal of every other dog is to become like that one.  There are forms of everything, animate and inanimate.  This concept is supported by the tee-shirt experiment we learned about in biology class. Women chose the most attractive man by what his tee shirt smelled like after he wore it for a day with no deodorant or cologne.  The women chose the men whose immune system differed the most from their own.  If they were to reproduce, the child would have a stronger immune system because the flaws of the parents would be filled in by the other's strengths.  Sam says this is true of atoms. Atoms are looking for their compliment, another atom that will fill their need for more or less electrons.  When they find that compliment, both atoms will be much more stable and strong.  I thought it was an extremely creative way to explain all that, and how the noble gases don't need someone to complete them. They are lonely, but content to be on their own.  I find myself sympathizing with them . . . even though they're just atoms. Maybe if passionate theories were used to explain science more often, people will become more passionate about the subject.  That's just a theory.

Introduction

The Disappearing Spoon and Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World From the Periodic Table of Elements by Sam Kean is just as exciting as it sounds. Who would've thought a chemistry book could be a page-turner? I find myself actually interested in this history-chemistry crossover . . . which is coming from a high-school student where history and chemistry had probably been the two most challenging subjects in her school career.  Mr. Kean does an extraordinary job of compiling interesting tidbits about the elements and combining them with educational facts. It's enough to keep any reader interested in the subject. Well, that's enough of me giving my review. Let's continue on to the actual book.

The first chapter has many different aspects in it. A lot of it is chemistry 101: what the rows and columns on the periodic table mean, what the symbols and numbers on it mean, the properties of protons, electrons, and neutrons, among other chemistry basics. But there are also personal stories from Sam's childhood run-in with chemistry.  His favorite element is mercury. When he was little, he broke many a mercury thermometer. He sat, fascinated, as he watched his mother collect the perfect beads of mercury from the floor with a toothpick, corralling them together and rolling the quivering puddle of silver-colored mercury onto an envelope, then into an old pill bottle. Over time, the bottle would collect more mercury as Sam dropped more thermometers.  Sometimes his mother would let him look at the mercury whisk around, always merging flawlessly into another shimmering, metallic puddle. This is how our author's interest in chemistry was born.

Sam was so fascinated with mercury, he'd keep an ear out for whenever it was mentioned in hopes to learn more about it. In school, he learned that on Lewis and Clark's exploration across the Great Plains, they carried with them 600 laxatives made of mercury. Each pill was four times the size of an aspirin. They were dubbed Dr. Rush's Bilious Pills, after the "doctor" who made them. Benjamin Rush, who is perhaps better known as a signer of the Declaration of Independence, lived in Philadelphia during the nasty yellow fever breakout there in 1793. He developed a mercury-chloride treatment that, theoretically, used a poison to battle a poison. Patients' hair and teeth fell out, and many died. More died from this treatment rather than the fever. He gave Lewis and Clark these pills for their journey to help combat the constipation caused by an explorer's unpredictable diet. Mercury deposits show the paths that the exploration party took, where someone had excreted the treatment along with whatever else was in their systems.  Sam also learned that mercury was used to separate fur from pelts used to make hats, which is why hatters (much like the Mad Hatter in Alice and Wonderland) went mad. The fumes from mercury practically fray the wiring in the brain, causing symptoms similar to that of Alzheimer's.  I wonder if that's why the phrase "mad as a hatter" came about.  I love learning tidbits and facts like that.  Little explanations for things that no one bothered to question.  I think I'm really going to enjoy this book.