The Ingredients: A Guided Tour of the Elements

Rating:
Summary: The Elements: A Short Primer In Thoughtful Prose
Review: Philip Ball's The Ingredients is a short and sweet introduction to the chemical elements. It is not a comprehensive description of each of the 110+ elements that appear on the periodic table. Rather it is a history of the concept of an element and a definition of what an element is done in context with examples. All the important terms from Chemistry 101 are there - atom, electron, element, isotope, neutron, nucleus, proton - as are all the important people and events in the history of the elements, but it is done in Ball's extremely readable prose style. Even though I've taught basic chemistry at the high school level and I've heard all this stuff before, I thoroughly enjoyed this short, but concept dense book.

Rating:
Summary: The Elements: A Short Primer In Thoughtful Prose
Review: Philip Ball's The Ingredients is a short and sweet introduction to the chemical elements. It is not a comprehensive description of each of the 110+ elements that appear on the periodic table. Rather it is a history of the concept of an element and a definition of what an element is done in context with examples. All the important terms from Chemistry 101 are there - atom, electron, element, isotope, neutron, nucleus, proton - as are all the important people and events in the history of the elements, but it is done in Ball's extremely readable prose style. Even though I've taught basic chemistry at the high school level and I've heard all this stuff before, I thoroughly enjoyed this short, but concept dense book.