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Uncle Tungsten
Oliver Sacks is a noted neurologist, and author of a number of books for popular audiences, including The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat. I came across Uncle Tungsten: Memories of a Chemical Boyhood while browsing through a bookstore a few months ago, and decided to give it a read.
Uncle Tungsten is billed as "Memories of a Chemical Boyhood" in the title, but it's actually far more than a simple biography of his childhood. The real focus of the book is trifold: the influence of chemistry upon his early life and his early chemistry experiments and researches into chemistry, the stories behind the discoveries of the elements comprising the periodic table and of the discovery of the periodic table itself, and the non-chemical aspects of his childhood.
We learn early on that Sacks' family was chock-full of chemists (the title of the book refers to an uncle whose factory produced light bulbs using tungsten filaments), physicists, and doctors (including both of his parents). As a result, he had access to volumes of information about chemistry and access to chemicals of every sort, not to mention a family that was quite happy to indulge his interests. He made good use of these resources, ultimately gaining his own chemistry lab at home (complete with fume cupboard) where he experimented with a little of everything in an attempt to find out as much as possible about the chemical world.
His stories about how various elements had been isolated are given color by his own experiences with these same elements as a child. When he reaches the radioactive elements, for example, he illustrates some of the properties of uranium by describing his experiments with a chunk of uranium ore given to him by one of his uncles! Other experiments include dropping sodium (which is highly reactive with water) into a pond in a nearby park to watch it burn, bleaching red roses by holding them over burning sulphur, and using a spectroscope to examine the absorption Sacks' childhood experiments, however, are only part of the picture. Tales of his childhood are frequently interrupted by stories about the pioneers of chemistry (such as the Curies, Mendeleev, and Humphry Davy) who identified and isolated the various elements. As he discusses the discoveries of the elements, he includes descriptions of those researchers who ferreted out these elements, the puzzles they encountered during their work, and the hazards they faced when working with dangerous substances.
The book does include "non-chemical memories," too. Although chemistry was his first love, Sacks got the opportunity (and, with physician parents, the encouragement) to dissect worms, octopi, and even human cadavers! He also shares his wartime memories of growing up as a child during the blitz and being sent away from home to live in a boarding school for his own safety, although he ultimately returned home before the war was over. Often, however, the non-chemical memories are offered as background for the rest of the story.
I enjoyed this book very much, even though the extent of my chemistry background consists of getting a "C-" in high-school chemistry. My father, a design engineer who worked for many years in a chemical engineering department at a university, also enjoyed it. Based on these two opinions, at least, I can conclude that the book probably would appeal to a fairly wide geek-audience.
More can be discovered about the author at www.oliversacks.com
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I dont know that it is overprotective so much as overlitigious. I remember the chemistry set I got as a kid. The regeants were little plastic containers with strips of paper, to which you added distilled water. You used little plastic pipettes to transfer a miniscule amount of chemical to the little "test tube tray" that came with it. Let the good times begin! This was about 10 years ago I imagine.
The real fun started when I inherited my uncle's chemistry set. Glass test tubes! Real chemicals! Nitrocellulose here I come!
Sex is the foundation of knowledge. If not for the desire to mate, we humans wouldn't have a drive to improve ourselves and the lives of our offspring.
Just watch. Take mating out of the picture, and see how few years it takes for advancement to grind to a halt for lack of grinding.
University store rooms (at least the lab based ones) often have fairly interesting and obscure things in them. Have been around for a few clearings out of lab chem stocks and there's alway sat least one event of: "2kg of XXX! Didn't they outlaw that like 15 years ago..." "Maybe and this is about 20 years old". This is why Gen. Chem. profs will mention to examine old bottles labeled 'ether' without touching them (or speaking loudly around them) even when precious few students will ever run into one of these items, they are found periodically.