From Stars To Stalagmites: How Everything Connects

Paul S Braterman

• Publisher: World Scientific
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9789814713337, 9789814713337
• eBook ISBN: 9789814324984
• Topic: Biological Sciences
• Subtopic: Science General
• Index: Biological Sciences

Table of contents

• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1. The Age of the Earth — An Age-Old Question Who thought what and when, and why
• 2. Atoms Old and New From Democritus to Rutherford
• 3. The Banker Who Lost His Head Lavoisier, gunpowder, revolution, and the birth of modern chemistry
• 4. From Particles to Molecules, with A Note On Homoeopathy Dalton, Avogadro, Cannizzaro; why did it take so long for the penny to drop?
• 5. The Discovery of the Noble Gases — What’s so New About Neon? A tiny difference in density leads to a whole new group of elements
• 6. Science, War, and Morality; The Tragedy of Fritz Haber Ammonia, explosives, fertiliser, gas warfare, and the most unintended of consequences
• 7. The Ozone Hole Story — A Mystery with Three Suspects Volcano, refrigerator, or jet plane?
• 8. Rain Gauge, Thermometer, Calendar, Warning What a stalagmite tells us about climate past; what history tells us about climate future
• 9. Making Metal Iron from the sky. Philistines and Phoenicians. Domestic uses of arsenic. Eros in Piccadilly. The jet age
• 10. In Praise of Uncertainty Unavoidable, and a good thing too
• 11. Everything is Fuzzy And the smaller, the fuzzier. Waves are particles. Particles are waves. Crisis in the atom
• 12. Why Things Have Shapes Lewis’s magic cubes. Stealing, sharing, double counting. The power of repulsion
• 13. Why Grass is Green or Why Our Blood is Red An old question answered. From sunlight to sugar. A brief history of colour vision. Blood and iron
• 14. Why Water is Weird Fragile bonds. Floating ice and foreign policy. Molecular recognition and the molecules of life
• 15. The Sun, The Earth, The Greenhouse Yellow-hot sun, infrared-warm Earth. When it comes to carbon dioxide, more is more. Disinformation and denialism
• 16. In The Beginning From Big Bang to small planet. The birth and death of stars. Size matters. The making of the elements. Vital dust
• Endnotes
• Glossary
• Index