Chemistry is one of the most direct factors that have changed our world, and all of our top research in modern times is inseparable from the role it plays in it. Pharmaceutical development is actually a process of chemical synthesis, and now the most popular new energy electric vehicles, its battery construction principle also has countless chemical basis, even the human killer nuclear bomb, its final explosion principle seems to be a physical process, but if human beings can not find radioactive elements, the nuclear bomb will not come close to reality. In this sense, chemistry is also a subject that requires our special attention.
So what is the basis of chemistry? It's also very simple to say, it is a chemical element. And although the number of chemical elements is still increasing, there are not many of them, and only 118 elements have been discovered by humans so far. It is these 118 elements that form the framework of a vast chemical system, in which all chemical reactions are completed.
In this sense, understanding the elements of chemistry must be the basis for learning chemistry. So what are these 118 elements? How are they discovered, recognized, and gradually brought into our lives ·? In fact, every chemical element has an extremely interesting story behind it.
Philip · Bauer, a member of the Chemical Society of United Kingdom, has been the editor of Nature magazine for more than 20 years, and has created more than 20 popular science works, and about chemical elements and the stories behind them, he opened the corresponding introduction to such an illustrated popular science book "History of the Discovery of Chemical Elements".
In this book, the author opens the corresponding science for us one by one in chronological order and according to our human cognition of chemical elements. It can be said that chemistry is a discipline that is both old and new. It is ancient because some chemical elements have been known by us humans for a long time and have been applied to our own lives.
For example, copper, if you think about the stage division of our ancient humans, there is a bronze age, which shows the important role played by copper at that time. And it is precisely because of the cognition and use of copper that human beings have more experience in the application of metals, so that human evolution has crossed a huge step. So what other metals existed in ancient times? Gold and silver have always been important metals for us to demonstrate our human value, and other metals such as tin, lead, and iron have gradually come to be recognized.
However, the ancient human understanding of chemical elements was not as clear as we are now, and the ancient understanding of the world is very different from our present, whether it is the European theory of the three classical elements, the theory of the four elements or the theory of the five elements of the continent, all represent the beginning of the ancient exploration of the elements.
And what about after that? What is the stage of development of the discovery of chemical elements? We have all heard of European alchemy, and we have heard that the Chinese emperors often developed elixirs, which is obviously an act of ignorance, but it is precisely this act of ignorance that has made a remarkable contribution to chemistry. Many chemical reactions are discovered and recognized in this process, such as sulfur, phosphorus, antimony, and phlogiston, which explores combustion, as a consequence of alchemical experiments.
And after the Renaissance? It was an era that was very close to modern times, it was an era of scientific explosion, and of course there was more about the discovery and understanding of the elements. In the author's popular science, the author uses the golden age of chemistry, the discovery of electricity, the age of radiation and the nuclear age as the era distinction, introducing us to the stories behind the elements found in these eras, so that more elements appear in the periodic table, so that some elements that may not be easy to be found are gradually discovered, and slowly improve the periodic table we see now. After all, the elements at the bottom of the periodic table almost all exist only in the laboratory, and they are all artificially created by us.
Such a book unveils the mystery of chemical elements for us, and uses the discovery of chemical elements to sort out the stories behind them in detail, so that we can enjoy the pleasure of the story during the reading process, and the corresponding cognitive improvement is a by-product, but it can definitely benefit us.
In addition, it should be noted that such a popular science book created by Western countries did not deliberately leave China out of their discovery system this time. The book mentions China's contribution to the discovery of chemical elements numerous times. This is also valuable in the context of the Western world's intentional or unintentional neglect of Eastern culture, and of course, it also allows us Chinese readers to have the joy of discovery in the process of reading, and also feel China's contribution to the discovery of world elements. #科普##元素##元素发现#