It's Elementary!

A wide-ranging and exuberant book on chemistry, beginning with a brief history of the subject, from the Greeks to the twentieth-century discovery of atomic structure. The text is amply illustrated in DK style. Following the history there are spreads on the periodic table and the big-bang formation of elements, and then a main section on some common elements and their compounds, and on the constitution of animals, water, food, light sources and some toxic materials. A final section lists all the elements, group by group, with brief summaries of history, naming, properties and uses.

The book is marred by occasional typos; there are worse embarrassments, which may arise from the intention to support Key Stage 2, which does not include isotopes. For example, the false statement that ‘All atoms of an element are identical’, attributed to the nineteenth-century scientist John Dalton, is not explicitly contradicted. An assertion that ‘A neutron is the uncharged part of an atom’s nucleus’ might lead one to infer, wrongly, that there is always just one neutron in an atom’s nucleus. Without any mention of isotopes, it is difficult to make sense of the statement that radium has ‘a longest half-life of 1,600 years’. Longest among what? Within its limitations, the book presents chemistry as an interesting and engaging subject.