by Tim James
7. H. Aldersey-Williams, Periodic Tales: The Curious Lives of the Elements (London: Viking, 2011).
8. C. Payne-Gaposchkin, Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin: An Autobiography and Other Recollections (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).
9. “Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin,” Encylopædia Britannica. Available from: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Cecilia-Payne-Gaposchkin (accessed August 18, 2017).
10. “The early universe,” CERN. Available from: https://home.cern/about/physics/early-universe (accessed August 18, 2017).
CHAPTER 5: BLOCK BY BLOCK
1. “The Scoville Unit,” Jalapeño Madness. Available from: http://www.jalapenomadness.com/jalapeno_scoville_units.html (accessed August 18, 2017).
2. “‘World’s hottest’ chilli pepper grown in St Asaph,” BBC News (May 17, 2017). Available from: http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-wales-north-east-wales-39946962 (accessed August 18, 2017).
3. A. Szallasi, P. M. Blumberg, “Resiniferatoxin, a phorbol-related diterpene, acts as an ultrapotent analog of capsaicin, the irritant constituent in red pepper,” Neuroscience, vol. 30, no. 2 (1989), pp. 515–20.
4. “How we taste,” Technology Review (April 2004). Available from: https://www.heise.de/tr/artikel/Wie-wir-schmecken-404206.html (accessed August 18, 2017).
5. “Vantablack,” Surrey Nanosystems. Available from: https://www.surreynanosystems.com/vantablack (accessed August 18, 2017).
6. J. Clayden, N. Greeves, S. Warren, Organic Chemistry, second edition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012); “4 workers killed at DuPont Chemical plant,” Scientific American (November 18, 2014). Available from: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/4-7.workers-killed-at-dupont-chemical-plant (accessed August 18, 2017).
7. B. Russell, History of Western Philosophy (Oxford: Routledge Classics, 2004).
8. B. Pennington, “The death of Pythagoras,” Philosophy Now, no. 121 (2017).
9. Russell, History of Western Philosophy.
10. A. Lavoisier, Traite Elementaire de Chemie (Paris: Cuchet, 1789).
11. E. Scerri, The Periodic Table: Its Story and Its Significance (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006).
12. E. Scerri, The Periodic Table: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011).
13. J. E. Jorpes, Jac. Berzelius: His Life and Work (Stockholm: Royal Swedish Academy of Science, 1966).
14. J. A. R. Newlands, On the Discovery of the Periodic Law: and On Relations of the Atomic Weights (London: E. & F. N. Spon, 1884).
15. M. D. Gordin, A Well-Ordered Thing: Dmitrii Mendeleev and the Shadow of the Periodic Table (New York: Basic Books, 2004).
16. “Periodic Law,” Mendeleev. Available from: http://www.mendeleev.nw.ru/period_law/ver_trif.html (accessed August 18, 2017).
CHAPTER 6: QUANTUM MECHANICS SAVES THE DAY
1. A. Werner, “Beitrag zum Ausbau des periodischen systems,” Berichte der deutschen chemischen Geselkchaft, vol. 38 (1905), pp. 914–21.
2. G. Seaborg, “Priestley Medal Address—The Periodic Table: Tortuous Path to Man-Made Elements” (April 16, 1979), reprinted in G. Seaborg, Modern Alchemy: Selected Papers of Glenn Seaborg Vol. 2 (Singapore: World Scientific Publishing Co., 1994).
3. H. E. White, Introduction to Atomic Spectra (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1934).
4. E. H. Riesenfeld, Practical Inorganic Chemistry, reprint of the 1943 edition (Barcelona: Labour, 1950).
5. Seaborg, “Priestley Medal Address.”
CHAPTER 7: THINGS THAT GO BOOM
1. T. M. Klapötke et al., “New azidotetrazoles: Structurally interesting and extremely sensitive,” Chemistry—An Asian Journal, vol. 7, no. 1 (2012), pp. 214–24.
2. “Alfred Nobel,” Encylopædia Britannica. Available from: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Alfred-Nobel (accessed August 18, 2017); E. J. Sirleaf, “Alfred Nobel’s legacy to women,” New York Times (December 12, 2011).
3. “Alfred Nobel’s fortune,” Nobel Peace Prize. Available from: https://www.nobelpeaceprize.org/History/Alfred-Nobel-s-fortune (accessed August 18, 2017).
4. J. Janes, Documents which Changed the Way We Live (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2017).
5. K. Fant, Alfred Nobel: A Biography (New York: Arcade Publishing, 2014).
CHAPTER 8: THE ALCHEMIST’S DREAM
1. “Sotheby’s sells record $71 million diamond to Chow Tai Fook,” Bloomberg (April 4, 2017). Available from: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-04-04/sotheby-s-sets-world-record-selling-71-million-pink-diamond (accessed August 18, 2017).
2. R. Kurin, Hope Diamond: The Legendary History of a Cursed Gem (New York: HarperCollins, 2007).
3. “Plutonium certified reference materials price list,” US Department of Energy—Office of Science. Available from: https://science.energy.gov/nbl/certified-reference-materials/prices-and-certificates/plutonium-certified-reference-materials-price-list (accessed August 18, 2017).
4. “Californium price,” Metalary. Available from: https://www.meta-lary.com/californium-price (accessed August 18, 2017).
5. G. D. Hedesan, An Alchemical Quest for Universal Knowledge: The “Christian Philosophy” of Jan Baptist Van Helmont 1579–1644 (Oxford: Routledge, 2016).
6. R. Patai, The Jewish Alchemists: A History and Source Book (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994).
7. B. Jonson, The Alchemist (1610). Available from: http://www.public-library.uk/ebooks/14/35.pdf (accessed August 18, 2017).
8. S. Lee, S. Ditko, Amazing Fantasy, no. 15 (August 15, 1962); S. Lee, J. Kirby, The Incredible Hulk, no. 1 (May 1, 1962); S. Lee, J. Kirby, The Fantastic Four, no. 1 (November 1, 1961); S. Lee, B. Everett, Daredevil, no. 1 (April 1, 1964); C. Claremont, J. Byrne, X-Men, no. 137 (September 1, 1980), and Phoenix: The Untold Story (April 1, 1984).
9. Godzilla (1954), dir. Ishiro Honda, Toho Co. Ltd.
10. C. Patterson, “Age of meteorites and the earth,” Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta, vol. 10, no. 4 (1956), pp. 230–7.
11. E. Rutherford, “The Collision of Alpha-particles with Light Atoms,” Philosophical Magazine, vol. 37 (1919).
12. “Public ignorant about radiation dose of mammograph,” Medscape (May 12, 2014). Available from: http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/824999 (accessed August 18, 2017).
13. Gary Mansfield, “Banana equivalent dose” (March 7, 1995). Available from: http://health.phys.iit.edu/extended_archive/9503/msg00074.html (accessed August 18, 2017).
14. D. R. Corson, K. R. MacKenzie, E. Serge, “Artificially radioactive element 85,” Physical Review, vol. 58, no. 8 (1940), pp. 672–8.
15. Iron Man 2 (2010), dir. Jon Favreau, Paramount Pictures.
16. “Edwin M. McMillan—facts,” Nobel Prize. Available from: http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/1951/mcmillan-facts.html (accessed August 18, 2017).
17. R. M. Shoch, Case Studies in Environmental Science (Eagan, MN: West Publishing Co., 1996).
18. “Americium,” ACS Publications. Available from: http://pubs.acs.org/cen/80th/print/americiumprint.html (accessed August 18, 2017).
19. “IUPAC announces the names of the elements 113, 115, 117 and 118,” International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (November 30, 2016. Available from: https://iupac.org/iupac-announces-the-names-of-the-elements-113-115-117-and-118 (accessed August 18, 2017).
20. J. Emsley, Nature’s Building Blocks: An A–Z Guide to the Elements (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001).
CHAPTER 9: LEFTISTS
1. A. K. Geim, M. V. Berry, “Of flying frogs and levitrons,” European Journal of Physics, vol. 18, no. 4 (1997), pp. 307–13.
2. K. S. Novoselov et al., “Electric firled effect in atomically thin carbon films,” Science, vol. 306, no. 5696 (2004), pp. 666–9.
3. “How strong is graphene?,” University of Manchester. Available from: http://www.graphene.manchester.ac.uk/discover/video-gallery/what-is-graphene/how-strong-is-graphene (accessed August 18, 2017); J. Abraham et al., “Tunable sieving of ions using graphene ox
ide membranes,” Nature Nanotechnology, no. 12 (2017), pp. 546–50.
4. “Properties of stainless steel, metals and other conductive materials,” TibTech Innovations. Available from: http://www.tibtech.com/conductivity.php (accessed August 18, 2017); “Understanding graphene,” Graphenea. Available from: https://www.graphenea.com/pages/graphene (accessed August 18, 2017).
5. J. Romer, A History of Ancient Egypt: From the First Farmers to the Great Pyramid (New York: Thomas Dunne Books, 2013).
6. J. Levy, Scientific Feuds: From Galileo to the Human Genome Project (London: New Holland Publishers, 2010).
7. S. Gray, “An account of some new electrical experiments,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, vols 31–3 (1708).
8. D. S. Lemons, Drawing Physics: 2,600 Years of Discovery from Thales to Higgs (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2017).
9. P. Bertucci, “Sparks in the dark: The attraction of electricity in the eighteenth century,” Endeavour, vol. 31, no. 3 (2007).
10. C. Brandon, The Electric Chair: An Unnatural American History (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1999).
11. Levy, Scientific Feuds; Electrocuting an Elephant (1903)—WARNING: Viewer Discretion—Disturbing footage—Thomas Edison, Change Before Going Productions (January 16, 2014). Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NoKi4coyFw0 (accessed August 18, 2017).
12. C. S. Combs, Deathwatch: American Film, Technology and the End of Life (New York: Columbia University Press, 2014).
13. M. S. Rosenwald, “‘Great God, he is alive!’ The first man executed by electric chair died slower than Thomas Edison expected,” Washington Post (April 28, 2017).
CHAPTER 10: ACIDS, CRYSTALS, AND LIGHT
1. D. Wilson, A History of British Serial Killing (London: Sphere, 2011); M. Whittington-Egan, R. Whittington-Egan, Murder on File: The World’s Most Notorious Killers (Castle Douglas: Neil Wilson Publishing, 2005).
2. D. H. Ripin, D. A. Evans, “pKas of inorganic and oxo-acids,” The Evans Group. Available from: http://evans.rc.fas.harvard.edu/pdf/evans_pKa_table.pdf (accessed August 18, 2017).
3. Ripin, Evans, “pKas of inorganic and oxo-acids”; G. T. Cheek, “Electrochemical studies of the Fries rearrangement in ionic liquids,” Electrochemical Society Transactions, vol. 16, no. 49 (2009), pp. 541–4.
4. G. A. Olah, “My search for carbocatins and their role in chemistry,” Nobel Lecture (December 8, 1994).
5. To illustrate this point, the author has taken the claim from the article on superacids from Wikipedia. Available from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superacid (accessed August 18, 2017) to illustrate this point. Wikipedia cites G. A. Olah, “Crossing conventional boundaries in half a century of research,” Journal of Organic Chemistry, vol. 70, no. 7 (2005), pp. 2413–29, for the claim that fluoroantimonic acid is 1016 times stronger than sulfuric known to have a pKa of −3, giving a pKa of −19.
6. T. R. Hogness, E. G. Lunn, “The ionisation of hydrogen by electron impact as interpreted by positive ray analysis,” Physical Review, vol. 21, no. 1 (1925), pp. 44–55.
7. This number is calculated from generating a Born-Haber cycle via: S. Lias et al., “Evaluated gas phase basicities and proton affinities of molecules: Heats of formation of protonated molecules,” Journal of Physical and Chemical Reference Data, vol. 13, no. 3 (1984), p. 695, and assumes that the HHe+ ion has a similar solubility to a lithium ion, which has comparable size. If we assume a free energy change of dissociation to be −360 kJmol-1 then at standard temperature and pressure we can invoke G = −RT lnKa. Taking −360/(0.008314 × 273) we obtain 158.6 = lnKa and therefore a Ka to have value of 4.15 x1068. Taking the negative logarithm of this number yields −68.6, which the author has rounded to −69.
8. “Strange but true: Superfluid helium can climb walls,” Scientific American (February 20, 2009). Available from: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/superfluid-can-climb-walls (accessed August 18, 2017).
CHAPTER 11: IT’S ALIVE, IT’S ALIVE!
1. A. C. Nathwani et al., “Polonium-210 poisoning: a first-hand account,” The Lancet, vol. 388, no. 10049 (2016), pp. 1075–80.
2. R. H. Adamson, “The acute lethal dose 50 (LD50) of caffeine in albino rats,” Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology, vol. 80 (2016), pp. 274–6.
3. E. Welsome, The Plutonium Files: America’s Secret Medical Experiments in the Cold War (New York: The Dial Press, 1999).
4. Lead: K. Sujatha et al., “Lead acetate induced neurotoxicity in Wistar albino rats: A pathological, immunological, and ultrastructural study,” Journal of Pharma and Bio Science, no. 2 (2011), pp. 459–62. Note: this assumes lead acetate. Thallium: Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, Toxicological Profile for Thallium (Atlanta, GA: Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, 1992). Available from: https://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/ToxProfiles/tp.asp?id=309&tid=49 (accessed August 18, 2017). Note: this assumes thallium acetate for fair comparison with lead. Arsenic: H. Marquardt et al., Toxicology (Cambridge, MA: Academic Press, 1999). Phosphorus: Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, Toxicological Profile for White Phosphorus (Atlanta, GA: Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, 1997) Available from: https://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/toxprofiles/tp103-c2.pdf (accessed August 18, 2017). Note: the value quoted seems to come from C. C. Lee, Mammalian Toxicity of Munition compounds. Phase I: Acute Oral Toxicity, Primary Skin and Eye Irritation, Dermal Sensitization, and Disposition and Metabolism, Report No. 1, AD B011150 (Kansas City, MO: Midwest Research Institute, 1975).
5. S. Ela, “Experimental study of toxic properties of dimethylcadmium,” Gigiena Truda i Professional’nye Zabolevaniya, no. 6 (1991), pp. 14–17.
6. J. R. Barash, S. S. Arnon, “A novel strain of clostridium botulinum that produces Type B and Type H botulinum toxins,” The Journal of Infectious Diseases, vol. 29, no. 2 (2014), pp. 183–91.
7. “Botox OnabotuliniumtoxinA,” Botox. Available from: http://www.botox.com (accessed August 18, 2017).
8. C. H. Mayo, interview given in Northwestern Health Journal (December 1924).
9. V. Busacchi, “Vincenzo Menghini and the discovery of iron in the blood,” Bullettino delle science mediche, vol. 130, no. 2 (1958), pp. 202–5.
10. E. Kinne-Saffran, R. K. Kinne, “Vitalism and synthesis of urea. From Friedrich Wöhler to Hans A. Krebs,” American Journal of Nephrology, vol. 19, no. 2 (1999), pp. 290–4.
11. K. H. Antman, “Introduction: The history of arsenic trioxide in cancer therapy,” The Oncologist, vol. 6, no. 2 (2001), pp. 1–2.
12. N. C. Lloyd, “The composition of Ehrlich’s salvarsan: Resolution of a century-old debate’, Angewandte Chemie, vol. 44, no. 6 (2005), pp. 941–4.
13. H. P. Chauhan, “Synthesis, spectroscopic characterization and antibacterial activity of antimony(III)bis(dialkyldithiocarbamato) alkyldithiocarbonates,” Spectrochimica Acta. Part A, vol. 81, no. 1 (2011), pp. 417–23; “Education in Chemistry—Cerium,” Royal Society of Chemistry. Available from: https://eic.rsc.org/elements/cerium/2020005.article (accessed August 18, 2017).
14. “Getting a tiny bit of this element on your skin will make you reek of garlic for weeks,” io9 (August 13, 2015). Available from: http://io9.gizmodo.com/getting-a-tiny-bit-of-this-element-on-your-skin-will-ma-1723949124 (accessed August 18, 2017).
15. R. Hambrecht et al., “Managing your angina symptoms with nitroglycerin,” Circulation, no. 127 (2013).
16. V. S. Ramachandran, Encyclopedia of the Human Brain (Cambridge, MA: Academic Press, 2002).
17. T. Bartholin, Historiarum anatomicarum rariorum centuria I et II (1654). Available from: https://books.google.nl/books?id=NT-LAd44hZ4UC&printsec=frontcover&dq=%22Historiarum+an-atomicarum+rariorum+centuria+I%22&hl=en&sa=X&ei=6T-MLVagK09SgBJvGgaAH&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=%22Historiarum%20anatomicarum%20rariorum%20centuria%20I%22&f=false (accessed August 18, 2017).
18. “New light on human torch mystery,” BBC News (31 August 1998). Available from: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/158853.stm (accessed August 18
, 2017).
19. M. Harrison, Fire from Heaven: A Study of Spontaneous Combustion in Human Beings (London: Skoob Books, 1990).
20. “Cause of fire killing woman still mystery,” St. Petersburg Times, Section 2 (July 4, 1951). Available from: https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=888&dat=19510704&id=rwRZAAAAIBAJ&sjid=lE8DAAAAIBAJ&pg=3085,1265930&hl=en (accessed August 18, 2017).
21. Garth Haslam, “1951, July 1: Mary Reeser’s fiery death,” Anomalies: The Strange and Unexplained. Available from: http://anomalyinfo.com/Stories/1951-july-1-mary-reesers-strange-death (accessed August 18, 2017).
22. L. E. Arnold, Ablaze! The Mysterious Fires of Spontaneous Human Combustion (New York: M. Evans and Co., 1995).
23. J. Randles, P. Hough, Spontaneous Human Combustion (London: Robert Hale Ltd, 2007).
24. G. Whitley, “Garston Church” (1867–74), Speke Archive Online. Available from: http://spekearchiveonline.co.uk/garston_church.htm (accessed August 18, 2017).
25. G. Gassmann, D. Glindemann, “Phosphane (PH3) in the biosphere,” Angewandte Chemie, vol. 32, no. 5 (1993), pp. 761–3.
CHAPTER 12: NINE ELEMENTS THAT CHANGED THE WORLD (AND ONE THAT DIDN’T)
1. “Pitch Drop Demonstration,” National Museums Scotland. Available from: https://www.nms.ac.uk/explore-our-collections/stories/science-and-technology/made-in-scotland-changing-the-world/scottish-science-innovations/pitch-drop-demonstration (accessed September 9, 2017).
2. “Bart the Lover,” The Simpsons, season 3, episode 16, dir. Carlos Baeza (original airdate February 13, 1992).
3. J. Emsley, Nature’s Building Blocks: An A–Z Guide to the Elements (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001).
4. E. Barrett, J. Mingo, Not Another Apple for the Teacher: Hundreds of Fascinating Facts from the World of Education (Newburyport, MA: Conari Press, 2002).
5. “The story of how the tin can nearly wasn’t,” BBC News (April 21, 2013). Available from: http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-21689069 (accessed August 18, 2017).
