Book Review: "The Disappearing Spoon: And Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World from the Periodic Table of the Elements," by Sam Kean

If you have to read about the periodic table, I guess this is the way to do it. You learn some about the people who discovered and worked with various elements (Marie Curie was a ho...mewrecker - and one of her guys ended up getting knocked out with a chair by his angry wife [good job, lady]), other science going on at the time (the first tests on testosterone were done with thousands of pounds of pureed bull testicles), and places where elements were discovered (such as Phrygia). The Phrygia part was probably most interesting to me. Oh, but I also liked learning about the nerdy prank science nerds play on their friends. Apparently gallium melts at 84*. So what the nerds do is make spoons out of it, then offer their friends tea. When the friends go to stir the tea, the spoon melts into the tea. It disappears. And then their friends are left to either think it was a good trick, or to wonder why their friends were trying to kill them with whatever poison clearly ate away the spoon.
But anyway, back to Phrygia.Wait, nevermind, that part is too long. I'll do another post.
So anyway, back to the review. I'm not a science nerd, so this book had it's dull moments, but thankfully I really don't care what the properties of elements are, so I could skim over parts that talked about equations and electrons and whatnot. I just liked the stories.