The Elements - A Perfect Coffee Table Book for Nerds
Most of the time when I get books for Christmas from my nontechnically inclined friends and family I don’t end up reading them because they are either:
- An uninteresting variety of This is how the future is going to look, or,
- A book I already own (e.g. Alan Greenspan’s “new” book).
So while I was holding my unopened present that my girlfriends parents handed me this past Christmas Eve I was a little nervous. I knew it was a book (based on the density and flexibility of the present) and I knew there was a very high chance that I wasn’t going to like it.
Boy, was I wrong.
The Elements by Theodore Gray (co-founder of wolfram research) dedicates 2 to 4 pages to each known element of the universe (except really funny elements like roentgenium. Basically if your spell checker knows it, it has its own page). Here’s why the book is ridiculously awesome:
- The quality of the photography and printing. Even Arsenic looks beautiful.
- The thoroughness of the information about each element. Atomic weight, density, crystal structure, atomic emission spectrum, an easy to follow state of matter graph, etc.
- The number of pictures per element. 13+ high quality shots of Uranium in various forms (including “Fiestaware” made prior to 1942. Ahhh, the good ol’days. A man could eat out of a radioactive bowl at the local Mexican food joint without someone telegraphing the police).
- The light hearted and often hilarious way the author writes about each element and the remainder of the book. Take this passage from the end of the book: “[Element collecting is] best enjoyed in responsible moderation - keep too much uranium (92) in the office, and people start asking questions (keep over 15 pounds, and the Feds start asking questions)” or from elsewhere in the book: “Copper is wonderful stuff. Just wonderful. Many other elements have some kind of gotcha about them: maybe they are great in every way except they’re poisonous, or they would be perfect except they explode when they touch water. Copper has no gotcha - it’s just nice stuff all around.”
- It’s a hard cover that comes with a tear out picture based table of elements on the last page. *shrug* I like hard covers and tear out pages, ok?
I’ve read it twice now, and it is a great book all round. It’s clear that the author is extraordinarily passionate about science and educating people. If you have doubts that a book about every element could ever be interesting, let alone the perfect coffee table book for nerds, take a look at: http://www.periodictable.com/theelements/pages.html. Here we find the authors very own website where you can browse though some of the pages (although, unfortunately, you can’t read them). He also has a fun little interactive online periodic table here: http://www.periodictable.com/.
Whenever I write about a book that I love I’ll be putting a Amazon referral link to help fund my reading addiction. In this case, however, I’m hoping you’ll buy the book from the Authors own site, even though it’s a little more. The author is clearly passionate about educating people and this will get him a little extra coin. Also, you’ll get an autographed copy of the book. How cool is that?
OR
The signed copy of The Elements from the author directly
If you have any questions or comments send me an email at: p.engineer(you know what goes here)gmail.com, I’d love to hear from you.
