Disappearing Spoon Chapter Summary

The Disappearing Spoon is a book of tales of madness, love and the history of the world from the periodic table of the elements. Although all the anecdotes that are present in this book are related to science and the periodic table, his anecdotes prove key roles that the elements played in people’s lives and this world. Thus, evoking greater understandings of elements in a more entertaining way. The Disappearing Spoon is written by an author named Sam Kean who studied physics and english in his college. He wrote several science novels and The Disappearing Spoon is the one that I read among his novels. To be exact, I only read the introduction, chapter one and chapter fourteen; stories of the artistic elements. Among other chapters of this book, chapter fourteen distinctively explains how the table of elements have impacted the lives, works, and inventions of famous

The overall organization of the anecdotes in this chapter convinces the readers and supports Kean’s idea. The anecdote about Goethe proves Kean’s point by explaining how Goethe’s works were influenced by his interest in chemistry. Scientific ideas that were possessed in Goethe’s works such as the Elective Affinities, “He also laded his novel Elective Affinities with spurious idea that marriages work like chemical reactions” (240), and the Faust, “...contains hoary speculation on alchemy and, worse, a bootless socratic dialogue between “Neptunists” and “Plutonists”.” (241), proves how chemistry impacted Goethe’s works. Sam Kean strengthens this idea by mentioning another writer named Mark Twain whose works were also influenced by chemistry. Mark Twain’s Sold to Satan uses a radioactive element, radium as composition of satan’s body. Thus, giving interesting characteristics to the satan that are characteristics of radium, “Radium’s radioactivity charges the air around it electrically, so Satan glows a luminescent green…”