ELEGANT SOLUTIONS Ten Beautiful Experions in Chemistry Ball
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ELEGANT SOLUTIONS
Ten Beautiful Experions in Chemistry
by Philip Ball
NIEUW boek met hare witte kaft met illustratie met groene letteropdruk;
212 pagina's met tientallen foto's, tekeningen, schetsne, illustraties enz.;
Where does beauty reside in experimental chemistry? Is it in the clarity of the experiment's conception? The design of the instruments? The nature of the knowledge gained, or of the product made?
Offering ten suggestions of what may be the most beautiful experiments in chemistry, Philip Ball provides an insight into the way chemists think and work, and demonstrates how what they do affects the rest of science and the wider world.
One example is the experiment conducted in the seventeenth century by the Flemish physician Jan van Helmont, In which he measured the growth of a willow tree in a pot over five years, nourished only (or so it seemed) by watering. The results led van Helmont to conclude that everything in our world is made from water. The experiment was simple, quantitative - and of course quite wrong. But it was no less beautiful for all that.
This exploration of beauty in experimental chemistry will stimulate scientists and non-scientists alike to think anew about how we come to know about the world, and how science and art are related. It looks at how the experiments were received at the time, how they changed the way we think, and how they have sometimes been distorted in the retelling.
Philip Ball is a freelance science writer and a Consultant Editor for Nature. The author of numerous science books, he has won various awards including the Aventis Science Book Prize 2005.
'Philip Ball is one of the most prolific and Imaginative of contemporary science writers. He has plenty of attitude, boalts a fine knowledge of visual art and a literary sensibility, and his science is encyclopaedic'
Chemistry in Britain
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction What is an Experiment? What is Beauty?
Section 1 Asking Questions of Nature
Chapter 1 How Does Your Garden Grow?
Van Helmont's Willow Tree and the Beauty of Quantification
Chapter 2 An Element Compounded
Cavendish's Water and the Beauty of Detail
Chapter 3 New Light
The Curies' Radium and the Beauty of Patience
Chapter 4 Radiation Explained
Rutherford's Alpha Particles and the Beauty of Elegance
Chapter 5 The Elements Came in One by One
Seaborgium's Chemistry: Small is Beautiful
Divertissement 1 The Chemical Theatre
Section 2 Posing New Questions
Chapter 6 Molecules Take Shape
Pasteur's Crystals and the Beauty of Simplicity
Divertissement 2 Myths and Romances
Chapter 7 Life and How To Make It
Urey and Miller's Prebiotic Chemistry and the Beauty of Imagination
Chapter 8 Not so Noble
Bartlett's Xenon Chemistry and the Beauty of Simplemindedness
Section 3 The Art of Making Things
Chapter 9 Nature Rebuilt
Woodward, Vitamin B12 and the Beauty of Economy
Chapter 10 Plato's Molecules
Paquette's Dodecahedrane and the Beauty of Design
Coda Chemical Aesthetics
Bibliography
Subject Index
This book wasn't my idea. Robert Eagling at the Royal Society of Chemistry proposed it to me, and I am grateful for the way he gently yet ersistently encouraged me to take the project on. I, of course, bear full sponsibility for the lacunae in the final choice of what the book contains. Tim Fishlock at the RSC helped the manuscript through its final stages.
I feel obliged to add a word of warning. I have always tried to ensure hat my books can be understood without a scientific training, and this one is no exception to that. But dissecting some of these classic chemistry experiments necessarily takes us deeply into the structures and behaviours of atoms and molecules, and, at the risk of insulting the telligence of the reader, it is perhaps fair to say that there are a few sections of the book that call for rather more effort from a lay audience than I have asked previously. If you have never before set eyes on a molecular structure, for example, you may find your eyes glazing around pages 169-172, and you should feel no guilt at passing quietly over them.
The immense generosity of several chemists has helped me to assemble the material and to iron out some of the most glaring errors. I am deeply grateful to Jeffrey Bada, Neil Bartlett, Albert Eschenmoser, Leo Paquette, Horst Prinzbach, Matthias Schadel and Claude Wintner for their assistance and comments.
While writing the book, I have had a sense that Oliver Sacks' inspiring enthusiasm for chemistry and its history has somehow been in the air, and in gratitude for his encouragement, support and friendship over the past several years I would like to dedicate this book to him.
Philip Ball
London, February 2005
Ten Beautiful Experions in Chemistry
by Philip Ball
NIEUW boek met hare witte kaft met illustratie met groene letteropdruk;
212 pagina's met tientallen foto's, tekeningen, schetsne, illustraties enz.;
Where does beauty reside in experimental chemistry? Is it in the clarity of the experiment's conception? The design of the instruments? The nature of the knowledge gained, or of the product made?
Offering ten suggestions of what may be the most beautiful experiments in chemistry, Philip Ball provides an insight into the way chemists think and work, and demonstrates how what they do affects the rest of science and the wider world.
One example is the experiment conducted in the seventeenth century by the Flemish physician Jan van Helmont, In which he measured the growth of a willow tree in a pot over five years, nourished only (or so it seemed) by watering. The results led van Helmont to conclude that everything in our world is made from water. The experiment was simple, quantitative - and of course quite wrong. But it was no less beautiful for all that.
This exploration of beauty in experimental chemistry will stimulate scientists and non-scientists alike to think anew about how we come to know about the world, and how science and art are related. It looks at how the experiments were received at the time, how they changed the way we think, and how they have sometimes been distorted in the retelling.
Philip Ball is a freelance science writer and a Consultant Editor for Nature. The author of numerous science books, he has won various awards including the Aventis Science Book Prize 2005.
'Philip Ball is one of the most prolific and Imaginative of contemporary science writers. He has plenty of attitude, boalts a fine knowledge of visual art and a literary sensibility, and his science is encyclopaedic'
Chemistry in Britain
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction What is an Experiment? What is Beauty?
Section 1 Asking Questions of Nature
Chapter 1 How Does Your Garden Grow?
Van Helmont's Willow Tree and the Beauty of Quantification
Chapter 2 An Element Compounded
Cavendish's Water and the Beauty of Detail
Chapter 3 New Light
The Curies' Radium and the Beauty of Patience
Chapter 4 Radiation Explained
Rutherford's Alpha Particles and the Beauty of Elegance
Chapter 5 The Elements Came in One by One
Seaborgium's Chemistry: Small is Beautiful
Divertissement 1 The Chemical Theatre
Section 2 Posing New Questions
Chapter 6 Molecules Take Shape
Pasteur's Crystals and the Beauty of Simplicity
Divertissement 2 Myths and Romances
Chapter 7 Life and How To Make It
Urey and Miller's Prebiotic Chemistry and the Beauty of Imagination
Chapter 8 Not so Noble
Bartlett's Xenon Chemistry and the Beauty of Simplemindedness
Section 3 The Art of Making Things
Chapter 9 Nature Rebuilt
Woodward, Vitamin B12 and the Beauty of Economy
Chapter 10 Plato's Molecules
Paquette's Dodecahedrane and the Beauty of Design
Coda Chemical Aesthetics
Bibliography
Subject Index
This book wasn't my idea. Robert Eagling at the Royal Society of Chemistry proposed it to me, and I am grateful for the way he gently yet ersistently encouraged me to take the project on. I, of course, bear full sponsibility for the lacunae in the final choice of what the book contains. Tim Fishlock at the RSC helped the manuscript through its final stages.
I feel obliged to add a word of warning. I have always tried to ensure hat my books can be understood without a scientific training, and this one is no exception to that. But dissecting some of these classic chemistry experiments necessarily takes us deeply into the structures and behaviours of atoms and molecules, and, at the risk of insulting the telligence of the reader, it is perhaps fair to say that there are a few sections of the book that call for rather more effort from a lay audience than I have asked previously. If you have never before set eyes on a molecular structure, for example, you may find your eyes glazing around pages 169-172, and you should feel no guilt at passing quietly over them.
The immense generosity of several chemists has helped me to assemble the material and to iron out some of the most glaring errors. I am deeply grateful to Jeffrey Bada, Neil Bartlett, Albert Eschenmoser, Leo Paquette, Horst Prinzbach, Matthias Schadel and Claude Wintner for their assistance and comments.
While writing the book, I have had a sense that Oliver Sacks' inspiring enthusiasm for chemistry and its history has somehow been in the air, and in gratitude for his encouragement, support and friendship over the past several years I would like to dedicate this book to him.
Philip Ball
London, February 2005
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