Personal Blogs

I see today's Google Doodle honors Dimitri Mendeleev who first described the periodic table. I can still remember the sense of wonder I felt, many years ago now, when I read that all chemical element fitted in to a system.

Because of that system it had been possible to predict the existence, and properties, of elements as yet unknown, but subsequently discovered by other investigators. This thought made me very excited and for a time I wanted to be a chemist.

By coincidence I've just been reading Primo Levi's book The Periodic Table. Published in 1975, it is a collection of short stories, each themed on a particular element. Two or three are works of pure imagination, but for the most part they are autobiographical, mainly from Levi's career as an industrial chemist in post-war Italy. Some draw on his experiences in Auschwitz.

Although the book wasn't published until the 1970s some of the stories seem to have been germinating for a long time. From something I read I believe final essay Carbon had been in Levi's mind since before his imprisonment. It is this story that first drew me to The Periodic Table (and later to Levi's other writing), because I read a very enthusiastic letter about it in a science journal, and I realized it was about an idea I've always had an interest in (and have tried to write about myself, but far less well).

In 2006 The Periodic Table was voted the best science book ever by the Royal Institution, in a very strong field. Paradoxically it probably won the prize because it is ultimately a humanistic book rather than a scientific one.

These wild snowdrops bloom by a path I often take. In the middle ages it was a road but today it is only a track-way.

Linnaeus named this flower Galanthus nivalis; Galanthus from Greek gala+anthos, 'milk-flower', and nivalis from Latin 'of snow'.

The common name snowdrop is only recorded from the 17 c and the origin is unclear, although the Oxford English Dictionary suggests a connection with the German schneetropfen, which itself possibly comes from the name of a kind of earring once popular.

Pyramus and Thisbe were star-crossed lovers who wooed through a wall.

The story had an unhappy ending though. Mine has a better. The relic above is a fragment of the Berlin Wall, which divided East Berlin from West between 1961 and 1989, and cost many lives.

When we visited the Iron Curtain had just been raised, and there were still border guards — it was their job — but they waved us through with every appearance of relief.

When we came to the Wall most of it was gone but there were plenty of bits on sale. You can still buy them easily enough today, with a stamp of authenticity, but mine was authenticated by a hammer.

I was surprised just recently to find how much of the Wall has survived and where the bits are. It is a symbol of freedom prevailing against barriers (something poor Pyramus and Thisbe longed for) and so parts of it have been dispersed to every continent save Antarctica — a sort of wall-diaspora — as you can see in this marvelous piece of journalism.

http://www.theguardian.com/cities/2014/oct/28/-sp-where-on-earth-berlin-wall-25-years-fall

Q. What teaching approach sounds like someone who makes all the calls?

A.  See comment

Q. How do you attract an English breakfast lover?

A. See comment

Hi Rapunzel, long time no see. Gruyère?

What 1,000 kg cheese doesn't move a lot?

A. See comment

Q. Why did Engels fail his exam?

A. See comment.

A. Sepia.