A lively but sometimes-confused introduction to chemistry theory and practice.
Students can learn how to read the periodic table and carry out some rudimentary chemical reactions with this primer.
Gebhart, who has a bachelor’s degree in chemistry and a master’s in science education, covers a narrow range of chemistry topics in this slender volume. He starts by displaying several partial versions of the periodic table of the elements, each introducing a new piece of data, including chemical symbols, atomic number, atomic weight, and valence electrons. He then offers a brief history of chemistry, touching on ancient concepts of the four elements and atomistic philosophy, medieval alchemy, the dawn of modern chemistry in the recognition that elements combine into compounds in fixed ratios, the rise and fall of phlogiston, Dmitri Mendeleyev’s creation of the periodic table, J.J. Thomson and Ernest Rutherford’s discovery of the atomic nucleus, and Niels Bohr’s detection of quantized energy levels in electron orbitals. With these few scraps of theoretical background recapped, the author then presents problem sets on the basics of stoichiometry, the accounting system that spells out the amount of substances that will go into and come out of a chemical reaction. These straightforward quantitative problems—“How many grams of Cu will react with 200 grams of AgNO3 in a chemical reaction with the balanced equation: Cu + 2AgNO3 = 2Ag + Cu(NO3)2?”—involve reading numbers off of the periodic table and performing simple calculations with them. The book’s second part consists of 15 experiments that are about as elementary as laboratory chemistry gets, requiring students to mix a few ingredients in a water solution and see what happens. Gebhart gives detailed instructions on weighing the various reagents, measuring the temperature and pH of solutions, and ascertaining the amount of the resulting product to see how it tallies against theoretical predictions.
Gebhart’s well-written historical introduction to chemistry ably conveys the excitement of the field to neophytes. (“Rutherford described his amazement at this discovery as being the same as if he had fired a cannon at a tissue and the cannon ball bounced back at him off the tissue.”) The author’s problem sets will give students a good workout, albeit in a very limited repertoire of calculations. Unfortunately, there are typos and errors in the text—the atomic weight of argon is listed in Gebhart’s periodic tables as 83.90 instead of its correct value of 39.948—and the laboratory exercises have major methodological flaws. In one experiment, students are asked to measure the pH of 10-molar hydrochloric acid, but acid that concentrated is beyond the measurement range of standard pH meters. In others, students are told to dry and weigh an insoluble precipitate to determine the percentage yield of a reaction, but not to wash the precipitate first. As a result, other compounds from the solution will cling to the precipitate and increase its final dry weight. And in a third set of experiments, students are invited to weigh a reaction solution to gauge the percentage yield of a reaction, but that instruction is nonsensical because all the reagents and products are together in the solution and the weight cannot change regardless of the yield. Some students may want to look for a more comprehensive guide.
A lively but sometimes-confused introduction to chemistry theory and practice.Pub Date: Sept. 21, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-97-753610-5
Page Count: 74
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Aug. 24, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Yes: it's high time for a de-romanticized, de-mythified, close-up retelling of the U.S. Space Program's launching—the inside story of those first seven astronauts.
But no: jazzy, jivey, exclamation-pointed, italicized Tom Wolfe "Mr. Overkill" hasn't really got the fight stuff for the job. Admittedly, he covers all the ground. He begins with the competitive, macho world of test pilots from which the astronauts came (thus being grossly overqualified to just sit in a controlled capsule); he follows the choosing of the Seven, the preparations for space flight, the flights themselves, the feelings of the wives; and he presents the breathless press coverage, the sudden celebrity, the glorification. He even throws in some of the technology. But instead of replacing the heroic standard version with the ring of truth, Wolfe merely offers an alternative myth: a surreal, satiric, often cartoony Wolfe-arama that, especially since there isn't a bit of documentation along the way, has one constantly wondering if anything really happened the way Wolfe tells it. His astronauts (referred to as "the brethren" or "The True Brothers") are obsessed with having the "right stuff" that certain blend of guts and smarts that spells pilot success. The Press is a ravenous fool, always referred to as "the eternal Victorian Gent": when Walter Cronkite's voice breaks while reporting a possible astronaut death, "There was the Press the Genteel Gent, coming up with the appropriate emotion. . . live. . . with no prompting whatsoever!" And, most off-puttingly, Wolfe presumes to enter the minds of one and all: he's with near-drowing Gus Grissom ("Cox. . . That face up there!—it's Cox. . . Cox knew how to get people out of here! . . . Cox! . . ."); he's with Betty Grissom angry about not staying at Holiday Inn ("Now. . . they truly owed her"); and, in a crude hatchet-job, he's with John Glenn furious at Al Shepard's being chosen for the first flight, pontificating to the others about their licentious behavior, or holding onto his self-image during his flight ("Oh, yes! I've been here before! And I am immune! I don't get into corners I can't get out of! . . . The Presbyterian Pilot was not about to foul up. His pipeline to dear Lord could not be clearer"). Certainly there's much here that Wolfe is quite right about, much that people will be interested in hearing: the P-R whitewash of Grissom's foul-up, the Life magazine excesses, the inter-astronaut tensions. And, for those who want to give Wolfe the benefit of the doubt throughout, there are emotional reconstructions that are juicily shrill.
But most readers outside the slick urban Wolfe orbit will find credibility fatally undermined by the self-indulgent digressions, the stylistic excesses, and the broadly satiric, anti-All-American stance; and, though The Right Stuff has enough energy, sass, and dirt to attract an audience, it mostly suggests that until Wolfe can put his subject first and his preening writing-persona second, he probably won't be a convincing chronicler of anything much weightier than radical chic.
Pub Date: Sept. 24, 1979
ISBN: 0312427565
Page Count: 370
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Oct. 13, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1979
BOOK TO SCREEN
A quirky wonder of a book.
A Peabody Award–winning NPR science reporter chronicles the life of a turn-of-the-century scientist and how her quest led to significant revelations about the meaning of order, chaos, and her own existence.
Miller began doing research on David Starr Jordan (1851-1931) to understand how he had managed to carry on after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake destroyed his work. A taxonomist who is credited with discovering “a full fifth of fish known to man in his day,” Jordan had amassed an unparalleled collection of ichthyological specimens. Gathering up all the fish he could save, Jordan sewed the nameplates that had been on the destroyed jars directly onto the fish. His perseverance intrigued the author, who also discusses the struggles she underwent after her affair with a woman ended a heterosexual relationship. Born into an upstate New York farm family, Jordan attended Cornell and then became an itinerant scholar and field researcher until he landed at Indiana University, where his first ichthyological collection was destroyed by lightning. In between this catastrophe and others involving family members’ deaths, he reconstructed his collection. Later, he was appointed as the founding president of Stanford, where he evolved into a Machiavellian figure who trampled on colleagues and sang the praises of eugenics. Miller concludes that Jordan displayed the characteristics of someone who relied on “positive illusions” to rebound from disaster and that his stand on eugenics came from a belief in “a divine hierarchy from bacteria to humans that point[ed]…toward better.” Considering recent research that negates biological hierarchies, the author then suggests that Jordan’s beloved taxonomic category—fish—does not exist. Part biography, part science report, and part meditation on how the chaos that caused Miller’s existential misery could also bring self-acceptance and a loving wife, this unique book is an ingenious celebration of diversity and the mysterious order that underlies all existence.
A quirky wonder of a book.Pub Date: April 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5011-6027-1
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Jan. 1, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
