"Tell children stories about elements". The author is I. Nichayev of the former Soviet Union.
One of my favorite books when I was young was not "A Dream of Red Mansions", " Besieged ", or "The Ordinary World" that I love so much now, but a popular science book "The Story of Elements", which talks about various chemical elements. I love it not only because of the attraction of those wonderful chemical changes, but also because the discoverers can endure loneliness, setbacks, and tests! The book
is a new translation of "The Story of Elements". It is targeted at teenagers and children, so the translation language is simpler and more suitable for the age characteristics of readers.
In this book, you will find that the author particularly emphasizes one feature, that is, the courage to question and challenge authority.
This is exactly what teenagers should learn.
Science gradually matures in the process of constantly denying its predecessors. Some of the authoritative views mentioned in the book were regarded as gods at the time. Once someone challenges them, they will bear some pressure from outside science. Fortunately, our chemists have withstood the test and refused to let go. They are observing All the doubtful points discovered in the experiment were solved, and the satisfactory results were finally obtained.
In this sense, this book is a bit like a suspense mystery novel.
When scientists finally get the results, their happiness is definitely no less than that of detectives who have solved the mystery.
Although I am already very familiar with the story of this book, I still followed my habit and started reading it step by step from the first chapter. It is recommended that you don’t skip reading this book, don’t read it casually, you must read it in order from beginning to end, because science has a scientific context, and the search for some subsequent elements is based on the discovery of some elements in the previous ones. This order establishes After confusion, the context is not clear.
For example, you must first learn Mendeleev's table, and then you can see how the spaces that appear after arranging them in order are filled one by one. Only by reading in order can you feel the prophecy The joy of Mendeleev's periodic table and the greatness of . When those blank rooms on the periodic table welcome their owners one by one, you can't help but feel happy.
When the elements that exist in nature are discovered one by one, then people can add and subtract atomic weights to create new elements according to the characteristics of Mendeleev's periodic table.
I especially like to read those so-called accidental stories, because I know that behind those so-called accidents lies the rigorous attitude of scientists towards science, and they are unwilling to relax their responsibility for any strange phenomenon.
For example, in the second half of the 18th century, Swedish an ordinary pharmacist Scheler discovered that every time it is burned, no matter what kind of sealed container is used, the air in the container will be reduced by 1/5. The air in that era Air was considered to be a kind of substance that could not be decomposed. Scheler was not bound by this authoritative view. He did countless experiments and finally discovered that air can be decomposed and that there are different types of air in the air, and one of them Scheler called it "flame air". The fire will burn particularly strong when burning in it. Today we call it oxygen this very magical air molecule.
