Demotic chemistry

Tim James and The Blob are in the same business - spreading Science to The People. When I worked at The Institute, I generally embraced classes with a performative joy; to convince first myself and then the students that science was fun as well as being important. I won't have won over everyone in the room all the time because humor is quirky and sometimes misses the mark. Also jokes fall flat if you try too hard, or become dull if the script gets repeated too often. 

Mr James was a secondary school science teacher in Ipswich UK with an internet presence, who has written an explanatory book El⁸⁷ E¹⁰ Me⁴⁹ N²² Ta⁵ L⁶² How the Periodic Table Can Now Explain (Nearly) Everything. It's okay, and might be an appropriate gift for a youngster who isn't in Mr James's 2nd Year Chem Class but is having the curiosity leeched from their soul by an earnest dullard. But it might be a better book with a more ruthless copy editor who knows when to leave a joke in and when to cut the casual "I'm down with the kids" language. I have a rush of empashame because I know I fall into being too clever-by-'arf too often. One arresting turn of phrase may be funny; two such in the same sentence is merely confusing.

You can see what poor authors have to deal with by noting the different covers for the UK and US editions. The publishing world is where graduates from The Arts Block go to make a living. The joke of making a mock periodic table on the cover was a bridge too far for the US publisher who has kept the squares, coloured them irrelevantly and added some stock photo thumb-nails to make it look relevant to the contents. And who oh why, did they allow N²² to do through when everyone knows nitrogen is N⁷

Thus Chapter 7 Things That Go Boom explains explosions by referring to quantum chemistry and the orbitals of electrons. It's hard to make explosions exciting on paper when The SlowMo Guys do it on camera. But it is the natural place to talk about Alfred Nobel and his Prizes. "The prize money is substantial, numbering in the millions, and it comes from Nobel's estate built entirely on dynamite. Not literally, obviously. That would be stupid." There's a good joke in there, but as written it clunks. A real stand-up for science [calling Dara Ó Briain or Eddie/Suzy Izzard] would work harder on their patter because fewer words makes bigger bang (boom-boom). Later on the same page " . . . one nitroglycerine particle will react with another to produce a bunch of gases, mostly carbon dioxide and water." That a bunch of is down with the kids speak and superfluous. Tighter is crisper. But what do I know? Mr James no longer has to teach science to spotty youth, because he's done well enough as an writer to leave England and make his living in America as author and screenwriter.

America? Not to be confused with Tim James of The Chemical Free Body a Portland-based Woo Movement to help Bowel Movement: We are a mission-based organization that is passionate about helping everybody ignite their highest excitement in life by putting themselves and their health first. Our goal is to rescue one gut at a time with honest, pure and natural ingredients that taste great, and absolutely no harmful man-made chemicals, no binders or fillers, just pure concentrated nature! poo to that!

Pedantic, obsessive me applauds the idea that every one of the 118 elements is mentioned at least once in the text. This is not a text-book, and makes no claims to being a comprehensive romp through the periodic table. But it's also scrappy with dangling anecdotes like the relating bones of Clara Immerwahr's 1915 suicide without giving her any background - luckily The Blob supplies that. But maybe that's okay. It may spark some curiosity, which will drive further reading, and maybe a critical comparison of sources and some skepticism about "Facts".

Sniping aside, I stand by my assessment that this book will help more 13 y.o. [girl]s think that science is interesting and amusing enough to keep on with chemistry and physics at school. Unless they roll their eyes right out of orbit at the punny Brittese language.