Disappearing Spoon- intro-chapter 2:

Disappearing Spoon started out with an intriguing story of a child who was fascinated with mercury, and then led into other stories and basically just introduced the style of writing in which the author uses and how the book will unravel! In chapter one, it began by explaining the periodic table, and at first stripping away the elements to simply understand the chart itself. After that interesting insight into the periodic table, the author began a very useful metaphor comparing an ancient man Plato and the elements on the periodic table because of the love and erotic dialogue Plato used to use, and the need for most elements to be "completed". However, that doesn't mean all the elements. Helium is the most independent element because it doesn't feel the need or desire as the other elements do to be completed and that goes for all the elements below helium. Then another story arose about a women who could not be taken seriously in the science world even though she was brilliant. Later in the chapter she finally gets a job as a professor, yet isn't paid. She eventually wins a Nobel prize! The chapter covered elements He,B,Sb,Tm,O, and Ho. The next chapter was much more interesting to me! It began talking about the longest words in history and the longest word existed in 1892. These long words were describing proteins. Then it dove into Carbon. Carbon can form from many directions and because of this, it is very steady and stable. This lead to silicon which is carbons copy. And with that, many scientists wonder about life elsewhere because of how closely related carbon and silicon are. Then we dove into silicon. Silicon is everywhere in everyday life. It is used in computers, microchips, cars, calculators ect. Silicon semiconductors sent men to the moon! And drive the most used in everyday life, Internet. Then, the story of how silicon is used and how germanium got kicked out and isn't used. This story talked about a scientist how spend a lot of time experimenting with germanium and gave up. Then two other scientists began and found that silicon worked better. Something super interesting I found out is that volcanoes spew silicon in chunks and the human body cannot distinguish the difference between carbon and silicon so many people breath it in and it is fetal. Scientists think this may be how dinosaurs died millions of years ago! Loved that fact :) then the story went deeper into the story of how the first chips were made. Onto chapter 3! Tell ya about it next Monday :) hope you all had a great week! And weekend. :)

 

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