The Disappearing Spoon: Chapter 1: Geography is Destiny Summary & Analysis

Most people have seen a copy of the periodic table hanging in their high school chemistry classroom.  The table gives off the impression of being highly organized but it’s not easy for the average person to understand. If one takes away all the letters and numbers from the table and just look at its shape, it somewhat resembles an asymmetrical “castle.” Each “brick” in the castle (or box on the table) is an element. There are a currently 112 known elements, plus a few that are waiting to be confirmed as such. Every element is necessary for the whole rest of the table to function.

Seventy-five percent of elements in the table are metals. On the righthand side are gases and two elements, mercury and bromine, which are liquid at the normal temperature in which humans live. In between metals and gases lie elements that have complicated and fascinating properties. The location of each element on the table determines its properties, which is why, for elements, “geography is destiny.” Column 18 on the far right of the table contains the noble gases. These would probably have been the preferred elements of the Ancient Greek philosopher Plato (if he knew what elements were). Plato developed a theory of “forms,” which means the abstract ideal of anything in the universe (e.g., a tree, a fish, a cup). He believed they existed in a separate realm from the mortal world.

In 1911, a Dutch-German scientist discovered that below –425ºF, helium became an ideal conductor for electricity. In 1937, a team of Russian and Canadian scientists performed a similar experiment and found that at –456ºF, helium achieves “perfect fluidness.” Plato could never have dreamed of a property like this, which achieves fluidity in such an ideal fashion. An element is a building block—something that cannot be further broken down by any ordinary chemical process. It took until the beginning of the 19th century for scientists to realize this and to begin to really understand elements.

The reason why elements react the way they do is because of electrons, which are negative particles that are contained inside an atom. Atoms exist on different energy levels based on how many electrons they have. They also have positive particles called protons. When electrons are passed between atoms, the atoms become charged and are called ions. Atoms need to achieve the right level of electrons; some will exchange electrons with other atoms “diplomatically,” whereas others are more aggressive. Helium only has two electrons and so it only ever exists at one level. Like all other gases, helium atoms don’t react with others because they don’t need to. They will only react with others under extreme, unusual conditions. 

Elsewhere on the table is the column of the most reactive gases, the halogens. More violent still are the alkali metals, which “can spontaneously combust in air or water.” They often make compounds with halogens. Electrons are very small compared to protons and neutrons but they take up the vast majority of the space of the atom, whereas the protons and neutrons are nestled in the middle. Halogens and alkalis connect when their ions bond, forming substances like salt—also known as sodium chloride.

The scientist Gilbert Lewis, who studied chemistry in Massachusetts and Germany around the beginning of the 20th century, did much to show how electrons work. He moved to the colonized Philippines to work for the U.S. government before returning to the U.S. and establishing what would come the best chemistry department in the world at UC Berkeley. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize many times but he never won. Part of the problem was that Lewis worked across a vast variety of contexts rather than focusing intensely on one particular question. He revised the definition of acids as “proton donors,” instead arguing that they are actually “electron thie[ves].” Today, chemists still use his ideas in order to make stronger and stronger acids.

Many of these acids are based on antimony, an element that has been used as paint, makeup, a laxative, and other forms of medicine despite the fact that it is toxic. In the 1970s, scientists realized that antimony could be used to make “custom acids.” Paradoxically, the strongest acid in the world, carborane, is also the “gentlest.” Because it is so stable, it isn’t reactive and doesn’t burn through matter like other strong acids.

As for Lewis, he was upset not to be recruited to work on the Manhattan Project during World War II and he died from a heart attack alone in his lab in 1946. This may have been caused by his cigar smoking. Yet it’s also possible that he either accidentally or deliberately exposed himself to cyanide gas, perhaps due to jealousy and resentment of a younger, more successful colleague.  

The middle of the periodic table contains the transition metals, which are relatively heavy and aggressive atoms. Moving rightward across the table, each element has one more electron than the one to the left. They fill the s-shells and p-shells in order, with s-shells holding two electrons and p-shells holding six. However, things get more complicated with the transition metals. Here electrons start filling d-shells, which hold up to 10 and are shaped like “misshapen balloon animals.” Even more confusingly, d-shells are not on the outer layer of the atom, meaning that the extra electrons are concealed beneath other layers and thus not available for reactions. For this reason, the transition metals tend to act similarly, regardless of how many electrons they have relative to one another. 

The two rows detached from the main part of the periodic table at the bottom contain the lanthanides, which are also known as “rare earths.” They hide their electrons even further inside the atom, in f-shells, and are hard to differentiate from one another because they behave in such similar fashions. Pure versions of these elements do not exist in the natural world since they always cross-contaminate with one another. 99 percent of an atom’s mass is contained in the nucleus.  Maria Goeppert-Mayer, perhaps the “most unlikely Nobel laureate ever,” researched the nucleus extensively. Goeppert-Mayer was born into a family of German academics but she struggled to get a PhD place and then a job due to sexism.

Goeppert-Mayer ended up working alongside her husband, Joseph Mayer, an American chemist. Goeppert-Mayer was invited to participate in the Manhattan Project but—as in the rest of her career thus far—she was only given a minor, auxiliary role. This was when she started her research on the nucleus. The number of protons inside the nucleus—the atomic number—determines which element an atom is. This number plus the number of neutrons is known as the atomic weight. Goeppert-Mayer began investigating the question of why the third simplest element, lithium, is not the third most abundant element in the universe, while the first and second simplest (hydrogen and helium) are the first and second most common.

Goeppert-Mayer was interested in why the actual third most abundant element in the universe, oxygen, is so exceptionally stable. She managed to prove that nuclei have shells like electrons and also that certain atomic numbers have what she called “magic nuclei” that are extra stable due to their symmetrical spherical shape. Meanwhile, atoms that have “misshapen” nuclei rarely form because their nuclei are too unstable. Around the same time, a group of German scientists made the same discovery about nuclear shells independently of Goeppert-Mayer. However, they acknowledged her findings and invited her to collaborate. This bolstered her career, and she was given a faculty position at UC San Diego shortly after. Still, when she won the Nobel Prize in 1963 her local newspaper described her as a “mother” rather than a scientist.  

Reading the periodic table horizontally reveals much about the elements, but this is not the only way to read it. Indeed, further information can be gleaned from reading its columns, which tell “whole new stories.”