Elemental: How the Periodic Table Can Now Explain (Nearly) Everything by Tim James
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

My introduction to Chemistry was through Kipp’s Apparatus emanating noxious sulphurous (and not with an ‘f’) effluvia smelling like mephitic poultry products. Incidentally, an unfortunate classmate with inordinate flatulence was wickedly nick-named Kipps by the rest of us.

This book is a refresher course in chemistry in an irreverent yet lucid style. What were mysterious valences are elucidated by the author using simpler concepts based on Quantum Theory (surely an oxymoron!) and the wave function equation of Schrodinger Erwin (this was before he published his thought experiment abut the infelicitous feline paradox).



There is lot of interesting trivia about various elements and the Periodic Table – the basis of chemistry. Examples:

I hereby declare dysprosium to be the only element you could remove from human history and absolutely nothing much would change. We salute you, dysprosium, the most boring element on the periodic table.
Fluoroantimonic acid is supposed to be ten quadrillion times stronger than sulphuric acid. However, helium hydride is supposed to be many many times stronger than fluoroantimonic acid!

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