Sunday, August 8, 2010  "The Disappearing Spoon"...a new book on
the periodic table  "Hard Science, Softened With Stories"
Janet Maslin  August 4th, 2010  The New York Times   “People
remember the table with a mix of fascination, fondness,
inadequacy and loathing,” Mr. Kean writes in the book, a work of
chatty popular science that means to rekindle affection for the
table and its many mysteries.  Though he is obviously quite
knowledgeable about chemistry, Mr. Kean knows that “probably the
biggest frustration for many students was that the people who
got the periodic table, who could really unpack how it worked,
could pull so many facts from it with such dweeby nonchalance.”
Mr. Kean’s book means to override that frustration by making
some of those facts available to anyone.  Here is what “The
Disappearing Spoon” does not do: really unpack how the periodic
table works. Nor does it provide clear and consistent
illumination about, say, what electrons do in s-shells versus
what they do in p-shells, let alone in