In this chapter, Sam Kean first introduces the German chemist Robert Bunsen who didn't actually invent the burner but improved upon it. He later developed the best antidote to arsenic even to this day, iron oxide hydrate, a chemical that's similar to rust that drags the arsenic out of the blood stream. He later stepped away from arsenic and went back to the University of Heidelberg in the 1850s where he invented the spectroscope. The spectroscope uses light to study the elements without boiling the compounds. This was a marvelous discovery; however, his only problem was that he couldn't get the flames hot enough to react with the elements. So he solved this by taking a regular gas burner and added a valve to the adjust the oxygen flow creating a sharp blue flame. This helped scientist better understand matter on a deeper level and find new and rarer elements. However, with all the discoveries of new elements they needed a way to sort them out.
Kean then describes of Dimitri Mendeleev; the man who we tend to associate the discovery of the periodic table with. However, he was only one of six people who contributed to the later and complete periodic table, but Mendeleev is known for contributing the most and even obsessing over it. His most serious rival was Julius Lothar Meyer, a German chemist who worked under Bunsen. He is credited for figuring out that oxygen is being transported by red blood cells by binding it to hemoglobin. He also published his own table at around the same time as Mendeleev did and split a pre- Nobel Prize, the Davy Medal, with each other. Mendeleev would even predict and name new elements which angered many scientist. Kean then introduces Paul Emile Francois Lecoq de Boisbaudran who discovered the element gallium through a spectroscope. However, when Mendeleev scanned de Boisbaurdran's data he told experimentalist that he had measured something wrong because the data did not match Mendeleev's predictions. Lecoq de Boisbaudran later retracted his data proving Mendeleev's predictions right. However, Mendeleev made some wrong predictions as well, such as the prediction that there are elements before hydrogen, but people still tend to only remember Mendeleev's accomplishments.
What was even more puzzling when creating the table was the lanthanides that sit at the bottom of the periodic table; even Mendeleev believed they were to "vexed" to make predictions about. Unfortunately, Mendeleev could have relieved his frustrations if he traveled just a bit more west to the village of Ytterby. This is where Kean introduces Johann Friedrich Bottger who became a famous magician by turning silver into gold. His fame spread to the king of Poland who imprisoned him until he could create gold. Since he could not deliver with this assignment, he later claimed that he could make porcelain. He was put to work with Ehrenfried Walter von Tschirnhaus who invented a special oven that reached over 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit. With its helped they discovered the secret ingredients to porcelain, white clay called kaolin and a feldspar rock. Later Kean describes the geological advantages Ytterby has when finding elements such as lanthanides. He also introduces Johan Gadolin who earned his reputation as a geochemist and is responsible for the discovery of many new elements near the Ytterby mines such as yttria. Seven other elements were discovered there such as ytterbium, yttrium, terbium, and erbium. Later it was holmium, thulium, and then gadolinium named after Gadolin. Six were Mendeleev's missing elements and with out these mines scientist would have never found these lanthanides.
What I really liked about this chapter was the interesting stories it portrayed, I especially liked the story of the making of porcelain. Throughout these three chapters I have not found anything I dislike in particular. I also didn't know what porcelains was made up until now, and I also didn't fully know who and how the periodic table was discovered. I had some knowledge about Mendeleev but I did not know about other scientist who contributed to the periodic table's creation. If there was one thing that I would tell a friend about this chapter is the story of Ytterby which I found very interesting.
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