Scheikunde: van zuren en basen tot chemische polariteit

by Joel Levy

Genres: Science, Nonfiction

176 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2010

About the author

Joel Levy is a writer and journalist specializing in science and history. He is the author of over a dozen books, including The Little Book of Conspiracies and Scientific Feuds: From Galileo to the Human Genome Project. Phobiapedia is his first book for children.

Reviews

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

A little more involved and complicated than the work bedside would indicate, but an excellent book nonetheless.
Just don't take the title too literally and expect that this is pure bedtime reading. Unless you can do molecular chemistry just before bed.

[Al Bità · Rating 3 out of 5]

A great summary of the history and developments in the field of Chemistry. Like the equivalent Book on Physics, this overall perspective is useful for catching up on the basic matters relating to the field of Chemistry. It presents humanity's slow but gradual development of ideas on this matter, together with brief histories of the main players in the field. An excellent refresher course on the Periodic Table of the elements, and how our eventual understanding of atoms and how they combine to form the various elements allowed us to categorise these elements. We tend to forget (or more accurately take for granted) many of the truly outstanding discoveries over the centuries, and as with many scientific aspects, it is always surprising how very recent many of these discoveries really are.

One aspect that I found myself surprised by was the interpretations of Alchemy, the precursor of Chemistry as such, which was widespread in the Middle Ages and before: concepts of 'humours', 'psychological types' (Phlegmatic, Sanguine, etc.), and their association of these in myriad combinations to form various series of Tables of Correspondences to explain both medical associations (e.g. walnuts are 'good for the brain' because they resemble brains in their convolutions of their skin, 'resonances' between certain elements and certain types of human conditions, etc.). Nowadays one would think that these ideas have been allocated to the dustbin of history as sincere but misguided superstitions: but then it dawned on me that many New Age concepts and ideas included in so-called naturalistic, holistic medicine are similar if not identical! Homeopathic medicines, for example, are still enmeshed in Mediaeval Alchemical superstitions…

[Katerina · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good chemistry refresher.

[Caroline Lu · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very detailed and interesting