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The Secret Life of the Periodic Table: Unlocking the mysteries of all 118 elements
272 pages, Paperback
Published July 17, 2025
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March 26, 2026
This is the book that taught me about the fundamental basics in chemistry, something I really appreciated since all other books I tried beforehand involved mathematical formulas, symbols and diagrams that I simply could not decipher regardless of how hard I tried... The fact that all matter are composed of such tiny, tiny particles known as 'atoms' and that atoms themselves are composed of even smaller subparticles of protons, neutrons and electrons that together make up the fabric of the universe, our existence and so on.. is deeply fascinating to me. STEM science has for the longest time ever been deeply inaccessible for me to understand. I thought I was just stupid, but it turns out we are all capable to learn anything we want, we just need the tools to be constructed in a way that works the best for our knowledge intake.
'The Secret Life of the Periodic Table' rely much less on numbers, although they are of course not completely excluded from the topic, and present the subject in a very easily, digestable way in pure text. The explanations are simple to follow through and did not made me feel like the interesting subject of chemistry was being gatekept from me. In fact, Dr Still's intention is for his reader to be further engaged and fascinated by chemistry. He wants to invoke a sense of awe and wonder that make us more curious to learn more. Each element is given a brief introduction and explanation. We learn how they were discovered and also by whom and under what circumstances. The alkali metal 'Lithium' was for example discovered in 1817 by Swedish chemist Johan August Arfwedson. He was looking at fire and sprinkled a grey mineral known as 'petalite' into the flame. Arfwedson found that 3% of the mineral's mass, when put into the flame, consisted of an unknown alkali residue. His empirical research would eventually lead humankind to make use of the lithium we have today.
I was mostly interested in the alkali metals and chose to put more attention into those specific parts. But yeah, there is a lot more to choose from, chemistry is a varied subject after all.
'The Secret Life of the Periodic Table' rely much less on numbers, although they are of course not completely excluded from the topic, and present the subject in a very easily, digestable way in pure text. The explanations are simple to follow through and did not made me feel like the interesting subject of chemistry was being gatekept from me. In fact, Dr Still's intention is for his reader to be further engaged and fascinated by chemistry. He wants to invoke a sense of awe and wonder that make us more curious to learn more. Each element is given a brief introduction and explanation. We learn how they were discovered and also by whom and under what circumstances. The alkali metal 'Lithium' was for example discovered in 1817 by Swedish chemist Johan August Arfwedson. He was looking at fire and sprinkled a grey mineral known as 'petalite' into the flame. Arfwedson found that 3% of the mineral's mass, when put into the flame, consisted of an unknown alkali residue. His empirical research would eventually lead humankind to make use of the lithium we have today.
I was mostly interested in the alkali metals and chose to put more attention into those specific parts. But yeah, there is a lot more to choose from, chemistry is a varied subject after all.
Displaying 1 of 1 review