"Periodic Tales: The Curious Lives of the Elements" by Hugh Aldersey-Williams is a really interesting book about how the periodic elements were discovered. The author has a myriad of tales on the novelty of elements as they were discovered. I was struck about how Radium was used as a dinner party entertainment after Marie Curie discovered it. The unnatural glow was a crowd pleaser...a deadly one.
Highly recommended as a pleasant distraction when you are trying to memorise the elements and their molecular weights :D
Just another plug - here is a poem by war poet Wilfred Owen about chlorine gas attacks in World War 1. A potent element that now resides tamely in swimming pools all over Singapore!
Gas! Gas! Quick, boys! - An ecstasy of fumbling
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime...
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I see him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues, -
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.
