Chemical Education Today
From Past Issues
The Cinderella Story Revisited—Again
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Kathryn R. Williams* and Gardiner H. Myers Department of Chemistry, University of Florida, P.O. Box 117200, Gainesville, FL 32611-7200
The second article in the January 1925 issue of the Journal (1) bears the intriguing title The Cinderella of Metals. The metal in question is Copper, the central character in a two-act play based on the group IA and IB elements. The play was presented by the fourth-grade class of the Hamilton School in Chicago. The teacher, M. Elizabeth Farson, was the author of the Journal article. The playwright’s pre-Disney view of the Cinderella story follows to some extent the version by the Grimm brothers (2). Ms. Farson refers to the discovery of the beauty of copper in some ashes after the element had melted and recooled—a legend reminiscent of the girl who “had to lie next to the hearth in the ashes” (2). Also consistent with the Grimm story is the portrayal of Gold and Silver as Cinderella’s beautiful, but conceited, stepsisters. According to the Grimm brothers, the stepsisters “had beautiful and fair features but nasty and wicked hearts” (2). The playwright was also influenced by later tellings of the Cinderella story. In the Grimm version, Cinderella’s benefactor was a white bird, but the play contains the Fairy Godmother figure so familiar today. Interestingly, this character takes the form of group IIA element Radium because of her “power to make sick people well and ugly people beautiful” (1). (The radioactive IA element francium was not discovered until 1939.) In the 1925 play, Sodium is the chaperone to the three IB metals (a role more suitable than a 4th-grade stepmother?). The featured male is Prince Potassium, who invites Sodium and her proteges to a ball. Other characters include the royal messenger Lithium, the lightest IA element, and the Prince’s two butlers, Rubidium and Cesium. As expected, in the end Prince Potassium chooses Copper as his dancing partner, because Copper is “so willing to serve the world” (1). A few years ago, a group of would-be playwrights and actors from the University of Florida Chemistry Department staged a recreation of “The Cinderella of Metals” with an
updated script, including some titillating references to the chemistry of the IA and IB elements; for example, Copper’s “nonstoichiometric relationship” in semiconductors, Sodium’s “D lines”, and Potassium’s “big E-zero”. There are also several role changes. The messenger Lithium is modernized as a FAX, who announces that Potassium, now the President of Group IA, is calling a joint meeting of groups IA and IB to decide who will be K’s partner at the Annual Meeting of the Metals. In distinct contrast to the 4th-grade script, the role of Fairy Godmother is assumed by Sodium, who explains that “Francium was supposed to come, but she came down with a severe case of alpha decay.” The modernized version has three new characters, all ions: NH4+, Cl ᎑, and OH᎑. Hydroxide is the new bride of Cesium, now Cs+, who transferred an electron to avoid turning into a liquid (mp of Cs = 29 °C). Ammonium, with Chloride at his side, is the play’s villain, who rudely interrupts the Group I meeting. He boasts his ability to substitute for Potassium chemically and makes known his plan to take K’s place as director of the meeting. The villain is soon driven off, when Hydroxide converts him to NH3 gas. The meeting continues, and, in keeping with the Cinderella theme, Potassium chooses Copper, “who will always be the first member of Group IB”, to go with him to the Annual Meeting. The play, complete with costumes and suitable props, was presented at the Florida statewide ACS meetings in 1993 and 1995. The complete texts of the 1925 Journal article and the 1995 version of the UF script and photographs from the performance may be found on JCE Online.W Literature Cited 1. Farson, M. E. J. Chem. Educ. 1925, 2, 57–61. 2. The Complete Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm; Zipes, J., Trans.; Bantam: New York, 1987; pp 86–92.
W Supplementary materials for this article are available on JCE Online at http://jchemed.chem.wisc.edu/Journal/issues/1999/ Jan/abs19.html.
*Corresponding author. Email:
[email protected] .
JChemEd.chem.wisc.edu • Vol. 76 No. 1 January 1999 • Journal of Chemical Education
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