Incredible Elements

by Joel Levy

Do chemical compounds confuse you? Are you allergic to atoms and muddled by molecules? The it's time to pick up Incredible Elements, a fun and fact-packed guide to the periodic table of elements.

Packed with images and diagrams, Incredible Elements guides you through the subject one step at a time, from early alchemy to modern-day chemistry. Along the way you'll read about some of the smartest scientists in human history and find out how chemical reactions affect our everyday lives.

Genres: Science, Nonfiction

144 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 2017

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

[Heather · Rating 4 out of 5]

This little organic treasure was in the bargain bin at Barnes and Noble. It's hard to attach a star rating to a book focused on clear and brief explanation of chemistry, so here is how I ended up the a rounded up 4 star rating.

I loved the historical dedication to whom and when aspects of elements and chemistry came to be where we are today (or at least at the time of writing). The scientists that had perseverance and dedication though errors and miscalculations came to compile a fraction of human knowledge to understand our world. One of the reasons my fish were once formatively named Rutherford, Dalton and Piaget (yes science education major).

The basics of chemistry and where it came from are clearly and as briefly as could be explained so that even my 6th graders would grasp the general idea, should they be inclined to scoop the book up. It lives up to the subtitle of "A Totally Non-scary Guide to Chemistry and Why it Matters".

Lastly, it brought to my mind fond flashes of past knowledge once attained in college courses, but much of which was filed far back. I remembered more than I thought I would. Since reading (and enjoying) a book often has much more to do with the reader and not the words, and I have a strange penchant for science, it gets 4 stars.

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent basic guide to chemistry mixing history and science.

[A.J. McMahon · Rating 5 out of 5]

I encountered this book while browsing in a bookshop, and bought it on impulse. For someone like me, whose time in a schoolroom chemistry class was long ago, this book was extremely informative. It would make an ideal gift to many a teenager, I imagine, as it is not only informative about modern chemistry but examines its historical background, the colourful stories of many of its pioneers, both of alchemy and modern chemistry, plus presenting chemistry in the context of modern science, e.g. by making statements such as that "matter and energy are the two basic components of the universe". After having proved to be an enjoyable read, the book now sits on my bookshelf as a work of reference if I ever need to look anything up. I can thoroughly recommend this book to anyone who is looking for the world's most basic introduction to chemistry.