93 pages • 3 hours read
Sam KeanThe Disappearing Spoon: And Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World from the Periodic Table
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2010A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
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Alkali metals
The alkalis form a column on the left side of the periodic table. Among them are hydrogen, sodium, and potassium. Each of the alkali elements has a single electron in its outer shell, which combines readily with other elements, especially the halogens on the other side of the table.
Berkeley
The University of California at Berkeley was for decades a hotbed of scientific breakthroughs, especially during the reign of Glenn Seaborg at the university’s Lawrence Radiation Lab between 1946 and 1961 and again in the 1970s; more than a dozen new elements were discovered there.
Dubna
Berkeley’s Cold War counterpart, the Dubna lab in Russia was founded by Gyorgy Flyorov in the 1950s, Dubna’s atomic research lab discovered a number of new atoms. This pitted it in a contest with Berkeley’s American researchers.
