The Disappearing Spoon by Sam Kean

Several years ago I read Penny Le Couteur and Jay Burreson’s , a book of popular science whose title came from a theory about Napoleon’s botched invasion of Russia during the winter. The theory goes, as Le Couteur and Burreson reported, that the buttons of Napoleon’s soldiers, which were made of tin, turned to powder in the extreme cold, thus exposing their tender torsos to the wind. Though it seems implied, the authors don’t come down strong on either side of the historical reality of this. Though the confluence is in doubt—indeed, it seems unlikely—the individual components of the tale are true: there were a lot of dead Frenchmen that winter, and tin—a perfectly solid metal under normal conditions—does turn into powder in extreme cold.

In The Disappearing Spoon, Sam Kean revisits this tale, but as a side note to yet another tin tale, namely Robert Scott’s fatal 1910 expedition to the South Pole. Many of his caches of food and fuel, which he left on the initial trip, had leaked in the interim, wasting the kerosene and spoiling the potables onto which it spilled. It’s speculated that the fuel cans, soldered with tin, might have succumbed to what is known as “tin pest”. This, too, is largely speculative; the tin pest problem is apparently too tricky to resolve, even for relatively recent history.

Obviously, it's barely changed in 150 years

But such is the sort of story that Kean likes to reproduce in his new book, a rather jovial romp that uses two main storytelling threads. The first is a history of the periodic table itself, beginning with Mendeleev and his contemporaries and leading all the way to Glenn Seaborg’s reorganization in the mid-20th century. This narrative intertwines with the discovery of elements which fill in or append to the known list; though Kean skips the elements that were known early on—e.g., nitrogen or oxygen—he details the discovery of the more difficult substances such as Aluminium, and certainly all of the trans-uranic elements, whose discoveries paralleled our knowledge of atomic science (and, unfortunately, nuclear weapons).

The second narrative thread is that of anecdotes, wherein Kean relates the funny stories, tricks, and other errata that accompany some of the elements. The name of the book, in fact, derives from a popular chemist prank: spoons made of gallium (which melts at just above room temperature) are served with tea or coffee, and dissolve when uses to stir. Often, these quirky stories are simply part and parcel of the discovery of the element itself; a mine near Ytterby, Sweden, produced no fewer than four eponymous elements: Yttrium, Ytterbium, Terbium, and Erbium; these latter three are all Lanthanides, one of two rows stuck mysteriously at the bottom of the Periodic Table, the way Alaska is shown floating nebulously off to the side of U.S. maps. The Lanthanides and Actinides disrupt the careful lines of the table because of the way electrons behave; the lanthanide series all have to do with the filling of “f-orbitals“, the science of which is beyond me, but which Kean spends no small amount of time explaining. While the f-orbitals are more complicated, the more basic and predictable tenets of electron behavior which govern the chemical properties of elements, such as their propensity to form bonds, are a little easier, and rather important in understanding why the table is arranged the way it is. In this, Kean does the job well enough; it’s difficult writing such concepts for what is essentially a lay audience.

Later elements, of course, necessarily introduce the concept of radiation, and all of the various and grisly stories that go along with it—though Keen tends away from the morbid, eschewing most talk of The Bomb, or the death of the Curies, for instance. Curiously, the race to produce new trans-uranic elements in the lab—even if they exist only for seconds or fractions of a second as they follow a chain of radioactive decay—gets a lot of page space, as Kean brings us up to the state of the art (as of about 2009), which has as much to do with politics now as it did during, say, Germany’s 20th-century dustups or America’s long staring contest with the Soviet Union.

By and large, The Disappearing Spoon is a wonderful little book that is manages to be an entertaining history of the period table and its elements, and a relatively easy [re]introduction to the basic principles of chemistry that make it all happen. I’m a little disappointed that Kean’s history skips over so many primordial elements with their own storied histories and instead focuses a bit too much on the historically-recent quest for synthetic elements, but I suppose that the former has been done before and the latter has not, so perhaps it’s to our benefit that the book mixes historicity with recency.

Napoleon's Buttons by Penny Le Couteur and Jay Burreson

I happened upon Napoleon’s Button entirely by accident when I was looking for cover art for His Excellency: George Washington; was so intrigued by the premise promised by the book cover that I decided to read it. It seemed right up my alley: chemistry and history mixed together, perhaps reminiscent of Bill Bryson’s A Short History of Nearly Everything.

What Napoleon’s Buttons is about, in brief, is a look at 17 different molecules or groups of molecules that have been historically important. The author(s) attempt to explain the chemistry that makes these molecules unique or interesting, with liberal use of diagrams and the occasional superfluous black and white photos of olive trees or whatnot. The additional information, and what promised to be the redeeming value of the book, is how these compounds have played out in history. The introduction cites Napoleon’s army being soundly discouraged and defeated in their attempt to march into Russia, perhaps because the tin used in the buttons on French military uniforms crumbles in cold (read: Russian) weather, meaning that the French soldiers suffered from poor clothing and eventually death and illness from the harsh climate. Disappointingly, even though the authors return to Napoleon’s army on several more occasions, including with regard to ascorbic acid (read: scurvy), the story of the tin buttons is never actually covered in a chapter. I’m not sure why that bothers me, but it does.

The chemistry here is good, and very interesting. That being said, the historical content seems tacked on: it takes a particular talent the blend the two well, and I’m afraid the authors of Napoleon’s Buttons just don’t have it (yet). Usually, each chapter begins with a brief teaser, and then the middle section consists mostly of chemistry—what molecules bond with what, &c.—with some history built in. What bothers me most, stylistically, is the chapter “conclusion,” which hearkens to middle school in its subtlety: reiterate the chapters main points and conclude, in essence, “[Molecule] is a very important molecule.” Ho-hum. Same format every time.

The book becomes gradually more complicated as it progresses, starting with relatively simple things like glucose (sugar) and ascorbic acid (vitamin c) and ending with things like chlorofluorocarbons. What was interesting to me was the way in which the historical importance of a molecule was not based on a binary value judgment: the chapter about quinine (the very important cure for malaria), for instance, revisits the compound DDT, a chlorocarbon known mostly for its harmful environmental impact but which the author credits with saving at least 50 million people from malarial death by its ability to kill mosquitos. CFCs (chlorofluorocarbons) were responsible for a dramatic increase in the quality of life before it was discovered that they harmed the ozone layer.

The Pill was discovered largely by accident, in an attempt to cheaply produce steroid compounds (not the sort that athletes take, but medicinal steroids). Olive oil may have been one of the most important compounds substances of the ancient world. The use of lime juice or other vitamin C-rich foods on sea voyages virtually eliminated the existence of scurvy among crews who used it.

I can’t help but feel a little disappointed by Napoleon’s Buttons, which has good science but fell short of the expository standard to which I tend to hold books like this (set, again, by the fabulous Bill Bryson). This is a very high bar, so my criticism shouldn’t be taken as a negative review: this book is still both highly interesting and well-written by most standards, and I recommend it as an engaging reading and a good chemistry primer that isn’t dry and boring.