From Stars To Stalagmites How Everything Connects

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

Feynman once selected, as the single most important statement in science, that everything is made of atoms. It follows that the properties of everything depend on how these atoms are joined together, giving rise to the vast field we know of today as chemistry. In this unique book specifically written to bridge the gap between chemistry and the layman, Braterman has put together a series of linked essays on chemistry related themes that are particularly engaging.The book begins with the age of the earth, and concludes with the life cycle of stars. In between, there are atoms old and new, the ozone hole mystery and how it was solved, synthetic fertilisers and explosives, reading the climate record, the extraction of metals, the wetness of water, and how the greenhouse effect on climate really works. A chapter in praise of uncertainty leads on to the “fuzziness” and sharing of electrons, and from there to molecular shape, grass-green and blood-red, the wetness of water, and molecular recognition as the basis of life.Organised in such a way as to illustrate and develop underlying principles and approaches, this book will appeal to anyone interested in chemistry, as well as its history and key personalities. Where many other titles have failed, this book succeeds brilliantly in capturing the spirit and essence of chemistry and delivering the science in easily digestible terms.

In 1980, computers were instruments of science and mathematics, military secrets and academia. Stern administrators lorded over sterile university laboratories and stressed one point to the wide-eyed students privileged enough to set foot within them: Computers were not toys. Defying authority, hackers seized control of monolithic mainframes to create a new breed of computer game: the roguelike, cryptic and tough-as-nails adventures drawn from text-based symbols instead of state-of-the-art 3D graphics. Despite their visual simplicity, roguelike games captivate thousands of players around the world. From the author of the bestselling Stay Awhile and Listen series, Dungeon Hacks: How NetHack, Angband, and Other Roguelikes Changed the Course of Video Games introduces you to the visionaries behind some of the most popular roguelikes of all time and shows how their creations paved the way for the blockbuster videogames of today—and beyond.