Did you know Mark Twain tried his hand at science fiction? In the book The Disappearing Spoon, author Sam Kean writes about Twain's prescient story "Sold to Satan." In the story, Satan’s problems stem, in part, from the fact that he is made entirely of the newly discovered radioactive element radium.
Download the podcast here. The Pittsburgh Post Gazette had this to say about the book:
If I only knew where to get me some gallium, I could hoodwink my tea-drinking mother. See, as Sam Kean writes in his recent book, "The Disappearing Spoon and Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World from the Periodic Table of the Elements" (Little Brown, 2010, $24), gallium is solid at typical room temperature. But leave it out on a moderate summer day (84 degrees) and it'll melt. "It's one of the few liquid metals you can touch without boiling your finger to the bone," he writes. "As a result, gallium has been a staple of practical jokes among the chemistry cognoscenti... One popular trick, since gallium molds easily and looks like aluminum, is to fashion gallium spoons, serve them with tea, and watch as your guests recoil when their Earl Grey 'eats' their utensils."
Read that full story, feature here. See also:
The Elements: A Visual Exploration of Every Known Atom in the Universe
,
The Joy of Chemistry: The Amazing Science of Familiar Things
,
Fire in the Belly: On Being a Man
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