Sam Kean: The Disappearing Spoon

In "A spoonful of science trickery," from the Thursday, December 02, 2010 issue of the Pittsburgh Post Gazette, Rebecca Sodergren writes:

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 article, in full, here.