The Elements: The New Guide to the Building Blocks of Our Universe

by Jack Challoner

As Carl Sagan memorably put it, “We're made of star stuff.” The  The New Guide to the Building Blocks of Our Universe  takes you on a gorgeously illustrated tour of the Periodic Table. Filled with fascinating information about the elements, their main compounds, and their principal uses, this authoritative yet accessible book, written by renowned popular-science writer Jack Challoner, makes “hard” science easy, interesting, and relevant to our daily lives.

Genres: Science, Nonfiction, Chemistry, Reference

160 pages, Hardcover

First published September 4, 2012

Reviews

[P.J. MacNamara · Rating 4 out of 5]

My girlfriend and I practically fought over the last copy of this in our local branch of The Works. It's one of those books that really jumps out and grabs your attention with a striking cover (you'll have to trust me on that!) and lots of beautiful photographs.

I have a lot of interests and science is one of them. I'm not an expert. And I don't want to make a career out of it. I'm just interested. And I have to say that coming at it from that angle, this really is hard work. My eyes kept glazing over. My mind kept wandering. I kept re-reading the same paragraph that refused to sink in on many occasions. Mr Challoner knows his stuff, there can be no doubt about that. But I think he needed to keep it firmly in his mind that he was writing a popular science book, not giving a lecture to a room full of incredibly brainy university students, and in my opinion he failed to do that.

[Timo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jack Challoner‘s „The elements“ takes the reader on a fascinating journey through the periodic table of elements. The book deals with the discovery and history of each element as well as the everyday use of the most important ones. To me, this book was a captivating and enchanting read. Once more I was reminded of how much of the stuff we use every day and take for granted actually depended on some scientist dedicating his life to some specific little part of science. Referring to Mr. Newton, it reminded me of the fact that if one sees further today, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants. I would recommend this piece to everyone who shares dear Dr. Faust‘s interest in „what holds the world together at its core“.

[Martin Hernandez · Rating 4 out of 5]

Este libro, publicado en 2014, contiene descripciones de todos los elementos de la tabla periódica, hasta el elemento 118 (recientemente bautizado como "Oganesón", en el libro todavía se refieren a él como ""ununoctium"). Una introducción rigurosa de física provee todos los antecedentes necesarios para entender las ideas más modernas respecto a la periodicidad de los elementos, y apreciar la belleza de los conceptos de la mecánica cuántica que explican dicha periodicidad. De cada elemento se menciona descubridor y circunstancias de su descubrimiento, sus principales aplicaciones y algunos datos curiosos. Estas bondades quizá también son el mayor problema del libro, pues me parece que falla un poco en su vocación de divulgación científica, pero es una excelente consulta para aprender los aspectos técnicos (usos y aplicaciones) de los "ladrillos" con los que se construye el mundo.

[gabrielle remy · Rating 5 out of 5]

my friend got this for me in grade 4 because i liked his copy and it was my favourite that whole year and is still one of my favourites. really informational and engaging and so many real world examples!

[AlenGarou · Rating 3 out of 5]

Non sono riuscita a trovare il corrispettivo italiano, ma nel complesso è un’opera ben fatta. Soprattutto per i ragazzi o chi si approccia al tema per la prima volta.

[Helena · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting description of the elements, not something for one sitting tho, i got bored in the middle

[Mary · Rating 2 out of 5]

Everybody loves this book and it was okay. It was more of a reference book, because it had sections for each of the elements. What I didn't like, though, was several times a page would end with the sentence wide open, no ending, and then you turn the page and its talking about a different element. Hmm.

[Michael Powell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent science book. I would highly recommend this to anyone with children. Written at HS+ level it has beautiful photos, that would engage younger children until they understood the text.

[Karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good and brief reminder of basic chemistry. Read the introduction first.

[William · Rating 4 out of 5]

Complete, orderly, and great illustrations

[Bibliophile · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book instantly caught my attention with its beautiful, colourful cover. I expected the book to be as fun and engaging as the cover. For me it is written for someone who has some background knowledge of science and elements. For anyone who doesn't know anything about elements. I find this book won't do much to make it any easier to understand. It has a fair amount of pictures and images but they are very ancient looking and dull. Unfortunately not very engaging at all.

[Emil]

npl: 546 Cha

[Reader · Rating 4 out of 5]

Had to fix all Marie Curies to Marie Sklodowska and Yuri Oganessian from Russian to Armenian. Otherwise informative and easily digestible

[Dianna D · Rating 4 out of 5]

Grad school was making me sad so I needed to stare at some chemistry

This one of my book buys from the UK. Not the best elements book, not the worst. I got the edition without pretty pictures.

[Carlyon Viles · Rating 4 out of 5]

Having studied chemistry up to A level at school I have long been fascinated with the individuality of the lesser known elements and found this book a very interesting read. I liked particularly the photographs of a sample of each element and approved of the more or less even amount of text given to each. Perhaps a map of the world could have been provided which showed the distribution of each element in its natural state and a larger picture of the extended Period Table with the transuranium elements. I read the book from cover to cover but it is ideal as a reference book.

[TrumanCoyote · Rating 4 out of 5]

They might've considered reading over what they had after laying it out. I noticed several egregious errors (a wrong caption and a couple of paragraphs ending in mid-sentence); and I might even have picked up on a few more if I knew a damn thing about chemistry.

[Jimbo · Rating 2 out of 5]

looks good, but there's a disconcerting absence of information about the author and his knowledge of the subject.

[Daniel Chaikin · Rating 3 out of 5]

For whatever reason I enjoyed working through this, while thinking about atomic structure. Lots of mistakes and typo's though.

[Stephanie Lam · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great book if you like science and chemistry but perfer other book about the elements and the periodic table table better