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The Elements: A Very Short Introduction

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This Very Short Introduction traces the history and cultural impact of the elements on humankind, and examines why people have long sought to identify the substances around them. Looking beyond the Periodic Table, the author examines our relationship with matter, from the uncomplicated vision of the Greek philosophers, who believed there were four elements - earth, air, fire, and water - to the work of modern-day scientists in creating elements such as hassium and meitnerium. Packed with anecdotes, The Elements is a highly engaging and entertaining exploration of the fundamental question: what is the world made from?

Author: Ball Philip
Publisher: OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
Pages: 179
ISBN: 9780192840998
Cover: Paperback
Edition Number: 1
Release Year: 2004

1: Aristotle's Quartet: The elements in antiquity
2: Revolution: How oxygen changed the world
3: Gold: The most desirable element
4: The Eightfold Path: Organizing the elements
5: The Atom Factories: Making new elements
6: The Chemical Brothers: Why isotopes are useful
7: For All Practical Purposes: Technologies of the elements
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Philip Ball is a freelance writer and broadcaster, and was an editor at Nature for more than twenty years. He writes regularly in the scientific and popular media and has written many books on the interactions of the sciences, the arts, and wider culture, including H2O: A Biography of Water and The Music Instinct. His book Critical Mass won the 2005 Aventis Prize for Science Books. Ball is also the 2022 recipient of the Royal Society’s Wilkins-Bernal-Medawar Medal for contributions to the history, philosophy, or social roles of science. He trained as a chemist at the University of Oxford and as a physicist at the University of Bristol, and he was an editor at Nature for more than twenty years. He lives in London.

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