Nature's Building Blocks: An A-Z Guide to the Elements

by John Emsley

Overview

John Emsley's Nature's Building Bocks was published in paperback in 2003. In this readable, informative, and fascinating guide to the elements are entries on each of the 100-odd chemical elements, arranged alphabetically from actinium to zirconium. Each entry comprises an explanation of where the element's name comes from, followed by Body element (the role it plays in living things), Element of history (how and when it was discovered), Economic element (what it is used for), Environmental element (where it occurs, how much), Chemical element (facts, figures, and narrative), and Element of surprise (an amazing, little-known fact). Since publication of the first edition there have been a number of developments. Three new chemical elements have been named and validated: darmstadtium, roetgenium, and copernicium and the section on 'transfermium elements' has now been incorporated into the main part of the book. Economic uses of elements have grown, and some quite rare elements such as Scandium are now economically important, along with updates to elements such as gold due to new roles in industry. Fully revised and updated for 2010, this browsable compendium holds a wealth of useful information.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780192570468
Publisher:	OUP Oxford
Publication date:	08/25/2011
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	710
File size:	6 MB

About the Author

John Emsley won the Science Book prize in 1995 for his Consumer's Good Chemical Guide, and followed this with a series of popular science books: Molecules at an Exhibition, Was it Something You Ate? (co-authored with P. Fell), and The Shocking History of Phosphorus, all of which have been translated into many other languages. After 20 years as a researcher and lecturer in chemistry at London University, he became a freelance writer, as well as Science Writer in Residence, first at Imperial College London and then at Cambridge University. In 2003 he was awarded the German Chemical Society's Writer's Award.

Table of Contents

	Preface	vii
	Acknowledgements	ix
	Introduction	1
	The elements (A-Z)	17
	The periodic table	511
Appendix	The discovery of the elements in chronological order	529
	Bibliography	533
	Lists of elements and atomic numbers	537
	The periodic table	539

What People are Saying About This

Oliver Sacks

"A marvel-encyclopedic in scope, but so full of enthusiasm, so engagingly written, that one can open it at any point and read for sheer delight. It is Dr. Emsley's new book which will now sit next to me on my desk."

Nature

"This is a fine, amusing and quirky book … to be browsed and savored in idle moments."

Interviews

Exclusive Author Essay
Element of Surprise

Who doesn't enjoy watching fireworks? Noisy, exciting, colorful. It seems hard to imagine today, but once upon a time people used to make their own fireworks. When I went to school it was still possible to buy the essential ingredients: saltpeter (potassium nitrate), sulfur, charcoal, and iron filings, and my friends and I experimented with them. Of course the fireworks we made were not very impressive -- a fizz and a few yellow sparks were all we produced -- and the reason was that we knew no chemistry.

When eventually I was taught chemistry at school, things became much clearer, and the more chemistry I learned, the more interested I became. So what is it about fireworks that make them such a good advertisement for the chemical elements? The most obvious link between them is that three of the traditional ingredients (sulfur, charcoal, and iron filings) are simply pure chemical elements, as is magnesium powder, which is used to create a brilliant white flame. But if you want color, then you need to know a little more about some of the other chemical elements, such as strontium, whose compounds burn with a bright red flame; or barium and copper, which burn green; or sodium, which can color flames a bright yellow.

And blue? No element burns with a purely blue flame, and if you attend a firework show you might notice how few of the bursts of stars that light up the sky are blue in color. Indeed, one of the skills of a practiced firework maker is to produce a blue display, and it is done by a careful combination of other colors, which are blended so as to appear blue.

We now know of 114 chemical elements, although only 85 or so are to be found on Earth, and it's from these that everything we see around us is made. About a dozen of them are used in firework manufacture. Even more are needed to create a human being, and while there are at least a few atoms of 90 elements in our bodies (and that includes gold and uranium), most are not essential to life and are simply there because there are minute traces of them in the foods we eat. Nevertheless, 25 elements are vital, and that goes for cobalt (the metal we normally associate with the pigment cobalt blue used by artists), chromium (of chrome plating), and nickel (used in coins and stainless steel), although the amounts of these in our bodies are tiny.

A lifelong career in chemistry has led me to collect all kinds of interesting facts about the chemical elements, and these I have turned into the book Nature's Building Blocks. In it I tell the fascinating story of each element, under headings such as cosmic element, human element, food element, medical element, historical element, economic element, element of war, environmental element, and, or course, chemical element. And at the end of each section I include an "element of surprise," with a fact so surprising that I felt it needed special note.

For example, we think of uranium as a modern element, essential for generating nuclear power and atomic bombs. Yet 2,000 years ago, in the time of Christ and the Roman Empire, a workman who made the tiles for mosaic floors used a uranium pigment to color some of them a fluorescent green. Where he got his uranium from we will never know, and those who stood on the floors of villas he decorated with his mosaics were happily unaware that the wonderful new color they so admired was giving them a daily dose of radiation! (John Emsley)

Editorial Reviews

Most people don't have fond memories of the periodic table from high school science classes, but here one of the best popularizers of the subject has filled his book with so many entertaining tidbits that he's in danger of starting a new fad for chemistry trivia. Take this one: When a piece of indium metal is bent, it lets out a high-pitched shriek.

bn.com

From actinium to zirconium, this marvelous encyclopedia details all 115 elements of the periodic table to reveal the nature of each and its relationship to us. With the general reader in mind, Emsley infuses his text with lots of quirky tidbits of information.

Science News

From actinium to zirconium, Emsley marshals the details into a well-organized, user-friendly reference about every little thing that makes up every big thing that makes up the universe as we know it ... A quite useful and even fascinating book in its own way, a lot of fun to flip through during idle moments.

San Francisco Chronicle

John Emsley's colorful account of all the elements in the universe is a succinct history of everything... Emsley drew on 20 years of collected magazine and newspaper articles to produce this marvelous reference work. 'Nature's Building Blocks' is the kind of book people consult in the pursuit of a single fact, but this fact will lead to another and another, drawing the reader in an enjoyable chase from naturally occurring nuclear reactors to human zinc deficiency and on to the number of elements named for one small town in Sweden (four).

New York Times Book Review

"An astonishingly comprehensive survey of nature's fundamental ingredients.... By combining juicy anecdotes and fun with a wealth of up-to-date reference material, 'Nature's Building Blocks' hits the spot."—Malcolm Browne, New York Times

"A marvel—encyclopedic in scope, but so full of enthusiasm, so engagingly written, that one can open it at any point and read for sheer delight.... I have read and possess many books on the elements, but it is Dr. Emsley's new book which will now sit next to me on my desk."—Oliver Sacks

"Emsley's colorful account of all the elements in the universe is a succinct history of everything.... Emsley drew on 20 years of collected magazine and newspaper articles to produce this marvelous reference work. 'Nature's Building Blocks' is the kind of book people consult in the pursuit of a single fact, but this fact will lead to another and another, drawing the reader in an enjoyable chase from naturally occurring nuclear reactors to human zinc deficiency and on to the number of elements named for one small town in Sweden (four)."—New York Times Book Review

"From actinium to zirconium, Emsley marshals the details into a well-organized, user-friendly reference about every little thing that makes up every big thing that makes up the universe as we know it.... A quite useful and even fascinating book in its own way, a lot of fun to flip through during idle moments."—San Francisco Chronicle

"Amusing and finely crafted.... The most amusing sections of the book are the text boxes and the little parting shots at the end of each chapter, the 'Elements of surprise'.... The elements come alive through stories and anecdotes. Emsley has cast his net wide and drawn on a huge range of material—this is a book for browsing almost at random.... The more general reader will find plenty to be intrigued and amused by.... A fine, amusing and quirky book that will sit as comfortably on an academic's bookshelf as beside the loo, to be browsed and savored in idle moments."—Nature

From the Publisher