The Disappearing Spoon - Periodic Table

[Richard Huntrods]

The Disappearing Spoon: And Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World from the Periodic Table of the Elements

amazon.ca link:

https://www.amazon.ca/Disappearing-S.../dp/0316051632

Comes on sale as kindle book occasionally.

It's a great book for anyone thinking about the chemicals we use & abuse in glass. Even better for those thinking about (or making) color.

Definite eye-opener on what does what, plus some really great anecdotes about the scientists and others who 'found' the various elements.

Definitely worth a look, IMO.

[Pete VanderLaan]

When I first arrived in Shanghai, there were hundreds of bags in the chemical storage area and everyone of them had Kanshi Characters on the bags saying what they were. I simply could not tell..

Eveline Mary Beth and I retired to an office space and Eveline explained that the language as written in script is simply impenetrable. She said that was the biggest problem for any enterprise. We flailed about as I had my computer with the formulas I wanted to use to get the place back on its feet and I couldn't even identify the chemicals.

Then Eveline, who I have viewed for a long time as brilliant, came back and had the periodic table of the elements in Script but also in the format as Mendeleev structured it ( a remarkable story in itself) The structure was untouched and math remains a universal language so we were able to figure out whats what since Eveline was raised in Hong Kong using the characters in school. Sometimes she would stare at one for what seemed hours and would say what it was. I converted that into chemical lingo with again, universal meanings and we were able to go back and mark all of the bags for Xi Wu who did the mixing for me. At first we worked side by side but he caught on really fast and I was able to turn to other issues.

In my color classes, I included a copy of the periodic table for the students, entirely in Chinese. I really treasure that, along with my Chinese Feng Shui tape measures.

[Art Freas]

The periodic table was one of the first and remains one of the best infographics. The density of the information in it is incredible.

One of the most unusual uses I have seen the periodic table put to is naming servers. I worked with a small development group. The name of the server mapped to the atomic number, for example radium.company.com is IP address x.y.z.88 . They also used the rows to identify type of server. Top three rows were network devices, fourth row databases, other servers and workstations 5 and down. Everybody had copies of the periodic chart in the cubes and some event had coffee cups with it.