Chemical Education Today
Book & Media Reviews Molecules at an Exhibition: Portraits of Intriguing Molecules in Everyday Life John Emsley. Oxford University Press: Oxford, 1998. xiii + 250 pp (incl. index). Hardback, ISBN 0-19-850266-4. $25.00. Paperback, ISBN 0-19-850379-2.
Chemistry books for nonscientists are not as abundant as their counterparts in physics, planetary sciences, or biology. John Emsley’s book Molecules at an Exhibition helps to correct that discrepancy. Many Journal readers will know of Emsley’s work through his earlier prize-winning book The Consumer’s Chemical Guide: A Jargon-Free Guide to the Chemicals of Everyday Life (W. H. Freeman, 1994) and his regular Chemistry in Britain column. In Molecules At An Exhibition, Emsley again gives readers, lay and professional alike, an intriguing tour of some chemical landscapes. The book is developed from articles written for a regular “Molecules of the Month” column in The Independent newspaper and from pieces that appeared in the author’s “Radicals” feature column in Chemistry in Britain. The idea of an exhibition of molecules developed from Emsley’s friendship with Alfred Bader, noted chemist and art collector. The book’s title derives from that of Moussorgsky’s famous piano suite Pictures at an Exhibition, based on drawings by Victor Hartmann, his contemporary and friend. The work was later transcribed for orchestra by Maurice Ravel. In contrast, Emsley’s creation needs no transcription. He organizes the work around a vicarious “trip” through a molecular museum of eight galleries (chapters), each exhibiting eight to 13 fascinating portraits of elements and compounds having important technological and societal applications and implications. The gallery tour includes Gallery 1: Nearly as Nature Intended—An exhibition of some curious molecules in the foods we eat; Gallery 2: Testing Your Metal—An exhibition of the metals which our body must have; Gallery 3: Starting Lives, Saving Lives, Screwing Up Lives—An exhibition of molecules that can help and harm the young; Gallery 4: Home, Sweet Home—An exhibition of detergents, dangers, delights, and delusions; Gallery 5: Material Progress and Immaterial Observations— An exhibition of molecules that make life a little easier; Gallery 6: Landscape Room: Environmental Cons, Concerns, and Comments—An exhibition of molecules that stalk the world; Gallery 7: We’re on the Road to Nowhere—An exhibition of molecules to transport us; and Gallery 8: Elements from Hell—An exhibition of molecules that are mainly malevolent.
There is also a quick guide to things large and small offering useful comparisons for various weights and measures, such as “A gram is about the weight of a peanut.” The writing style is straightforward and engaging, with the occasional witticism so characteristic of Emsley; for example,
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“Drinking rhino horn tea [for its purported aphrodisiacal effects], the traditional way of taking it, will have the same effect as making tea from your own nail clippings.” There are several English terms unfamiliar to many United States citizens—sweets (candy), nappies (diapers), crisps (chips), lorries (trucks)—but they are used in sufficient context and are not in great enough numbers to be problematic. Throughout the book are delightful accounts and anecdotes about consumer products. For example, Emsley relates the buildup and then decrease of lead in French wines to the introduction and subsequent elimination of tetraethyl lead in gasoline. He provides a splendidly detailed account of the workings of an auto air bag. Drawing on W. S. Gilbert’s poem Ozone, Emsley points out the erroneous sense of the time that ozone was abundant at higher altitudes and deficient in cities, the opposite of what we know today. There also are accounts of Brazilian bees that actually seek out and store DDT, possibly for use as a sex attractant; of distances measured in terms of cups of tea necessary for the journey; and of scientific rivalries such as that of Heatley and Moyer over penicillin. These are but a few of the fascinating accounts featuring chemistry’s pervasive impact on our lives. The book is not, however, error free. There are a number of annoying misspellings (attached vs attacked, particlers vs particles, CDM vs DCM), which should have been picked up by a spell checker or in proof reading. I would have preferred that the term iron ions rather than metal be used in conjunction with iron in the body. More serious are the factual errors. The atomic weight of beryllium is given as 10, which is actually the mass number of Be-10, not the atomic weight of beryllium. Plants are claimed to have produced almost all the nitrogen for biomass until chemists were able to fix nitrogen. This overlooks the fact that plants do not fix nitrogen at all, but use the atmospheric nitrogen fixed by bacteria and lightning as a water-soluble nitrogen source that they incorporate into organic nitrogen compounds. Cadmium chloride is described as insoluble, yet its solubility (140 g/100 g water) is more than three times that of sodium chloride (
