Disappearing Spoon, The Literary Elements

Science History

The universe from the Big Bang to this morning.

Third-person point-of-view with the author diving into the perspectives of different historical characters at times.

Generally speaking, the tone is more conversational than the dry direct quality of a science textbook. The mood varies, but for the most part conveys the author’s own sense of awe and wonder at the miracles of science and discovery he is discussing.

Protagonist: Scientific inquisitiveness. Antagonist: the use of such inquisitiveness for the purpose of evil intent.

Several individual conflicts arise over the course of the text, but these are almost all related thematically to what might be identified as the overarching major conflict: ambition versus ethics.

The climax is actually the foundational event behind the concept of the book: the establishment of the Periodic Table of Elements.

In the Introduction, the author relates a story from his own childhood about how he had trouble locating his favorite element on the table because its symbol (Hg) is comprised of two letters which do not even appear in its name. This foreshadows the seemingly bizarre construction of symbols (like Fe for iron) versus the obvious quality of others (such as Mn for manganese) that will be explained throughout the narrative.

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The younger brother of Lucy and Linus, Rerun Van Pelt, in the Peanuts comic strip has gained a sort of secondary level of fame for his ability to blow square balloons out of regularly shaped material. This talent is alluded to in the section on the science of bubbles relative to Lord Kelvin being able to produce sorta-kinda square-ish bubbles.

The author demonstrates a deeply ingrained propensity for combining irony with imagery to initiate the backstory of the many anecdotes about individual scientists and discoveries which populate the text: “Donald Glaser—a lowly, thirsty, twenty-five-year-old junior faculty member who frequented bars near the University of Michigan—was staring one night at the bubbles streaming through his lager, and he naturally started thinking particle physics.”

The man who invented the poison gas which was sped up Hitler’s “Final Solution” to dealing with the “Jewish Problem” was Fritz Haber. Haber was Jewish and not forced or coerced into his invention, but an active and eager and willing participant in German/Nazi atrocities in both the first and second World War.

The parallel between the heights of greatness which can come courtesy of the elements and the depths of depravity which the very same materials can foster in the minds of creative genius is situated in the description of Haber: “Haber won the vacant 1918 Nobel Prize in chemistry…for his process to produce ammonia from nitrogen, even though his fertilizers hadn’t protected thousands of Germans from famine during the war. A year later, he was charged with being an international war criminal for prosecuting a campaign of chemical warfare that had maimed hundreds of thousands of people and terrorized millions more”

Two examples for the price of one sentence with “Depression” and “Manhattan Project” both used to represent something all-encompassing within a single unifying term: “After the Depression lifted, hundreds of her [Maria Goeppert-Mayer] intellectual peers gathered for the Manhattan Project, perhaps the most vitalizing exchange of scientific ideas ever.”

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