“The Disappearing Spoon” came to me via my friend Christopher.  While technically about the history of the Periodic Table, it is more the history of the people who contributed to the table.  There were several competing models for organizing elements.  A Russian named “Mendeleev” got it 95% right back in 1869, and created the basic table we know today. [Of course all the radioactive materials at the bottom of the table came later]. The book spends most of its time introducing the various scientists who discovered different groups of elements.  The author spends a lot of time on their quirks and professional rivalries.  You might come away with the feeling that the scientific community in the late 1800’s early 1900’s was crazier than characters on “Real Housewives of Atlanta”. From all of the anecdotes, that might actually be true. The title comes from scientists making spoons out of Gallium, which melts just above room temperature.  Pranksters in lab coats would set out pure-gallium spoons in break rooms then wet themselves as their victim’s spoons disappeared mixing coffee.  [I didn’t see where the book addressed what happens if you actually drink the coffee with its molten gallium]. One fun story was how Madame Curie invited two men into a closet to show off some glow-in-the-dark radioactive material.  One of the men’s wives knocked on the door because she thought they had been inside “too long”. The first two-thirds of the book struck me as a bit irreverent, but then I started running across REALLY interesting facts.  For example, long ago there was a natural nuclear reactor in Oklo, Gabon (an equatorial African country).  It had just the right conditions of uranium, water, and algae to leach uranium out of the soil where it would concentrate and begin to react, but then river water would moderate the reaction before it went critical. I also like the idea that there is between 20 and 30 grams of Francium in the Earth at any moment.  That radioactive element decays almost immediately, but other things decay into Francium on their way to a third element.  You can estimate the amounts of the first and third isotopes, the rate of decay, and determine how much matter is halfway through the process. Something else of interest to me was a discussion of the constant “alpha” which controls how tightly negative electrons are bound to the positive nucleus.  It is a function of amongst other things, the speed of light.  There has been some debate about whether alpha has been truly constant over time.  Apparently Christian Fundamentalists who refuse to admit that the universe isn’t 6,000 years old, claim that if alpha changed over time then the speed of light could have been millions of time faster in the past to somehow explain why we see things that had to have happened billions of years ago were really more recent.  It is a more interesting argument than just “the universe is so complex it must have been designed”. If you are the kind of person who remembers that elements in the same column of the periodic table react in similar fashion, and you want a quirky history of science, I recommend the book.  I tried to visit the website listed on the back cover and found it missing.  Incriminating photos might last forever on the Net, but useful information “disappears” with little effort.  The publisher still exists, and it turns out they made a children’s version of “The Disappearing Spoon” due out later this year.  Be sure you get the version you need.