Free download Elementary: The Periodic Table Explained by James M. Russell. Published by Michael O’Mara Books. English | 193 Pages | EPUB | ISBN: 178929102X, 1789291968
Description of Elementary
The periodic table, created in the early 1860s by Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleev, marked one of the most extraordinary advances in modern chemistry.
This basic visual aid helped scientists to gain a deeper understanding of what chemical elements really were: and, astonishingly, it also correctly predicted the properties of elements that hadn’t been discovered at the time.
Here, in the authoritative Elementary, James Russell uses his lively, accessible and engaging narrative to tell the story behind all the elements we now know about.
From learning about the creation of the first three elements, hydrogen, lithium and helium, in the big bang, through to oxygen and carbon, which sustain life on earth – along with the many weird and wonderful uses of elements as varied as fluorine, arsenic, krypton and einsteinium – even the most unscientifically minded will be enthralled by this fascinating subject.
Russell compellingly details these most basic building blocks of the universe, and the people who identified, isolated and even created them.
The periodic table is one of the most transformative scientific discoveries of the last two centuries, yet its inception required no scientific instruments or experiments – just a pen, a piece of paper and a talented Russian chemist, Dmitri Mendeleev (1834–1907).
In the early 1860s, fascinated by atomic theory – the idea that elements are uniquely defined by their atomic make-up – Mendeleev wanted to explore the idea of organizing all of the known elements in a simple diagram.
At the time, it was known that matter was made up of ‘elements’, sixty-two of which had been identified.
Mendeleev started by arranging them in order of their atomic mass number, which is the total number of neutrons and protons in an atom of that element. (The nucleus of an atom is made up of protons and neutrons, around which a cloud of electrons orbits: the electrons are so light that their mass is ignored in calculating atomic mass.)