Classic guide provides intriguing entertainment while elucidating sound scientific principles, with more than 100 unusual stunts: cold fire, dust explosions, a nylon rope trick, a disappearing beaker, much more.

Describes and gives instructions for lecture demonstrations covering acids and bases and liquids, solutions, and colloids

Von der Alchimie zur modernen Chemie, von der Kunst des Goldmachens zur Moleküldynamik und chemischen Großproduktion: Verfolgen Sie die Entwicklung einer geheimnisvollen Kunst zur Naturwissenschaft! Der Autor trug Dokumente und Illustrationen aus über 400 Jahren zusammen; die Abbildungen sind ganzseitig und von hervorragender Qualität. Lebendig, interessant, informativ! (05/00)

In Cathedrals of Science, Patrick Coffey describes how chemistry got its modern footing-how thirteen brilliant men and one woman struggled with the laws of the universe and with each other. They wanted to discover how the world worked, but they also wanted credit for making those discoveries, and their personalities often affected how that credit was assigned. Gilbert Lewis, for example, could be reclusive and resentful, and his enmity with Walther Nernst may have cost him the Nobel Prize; Irving Langmuir, gregarious and charming, "rediscovered" Lewis's theory of the chemical bond and received much of the credit for it. Langmuir's personality smoothed his path to the Nobel Prize over Lewis. Coffey deals with moral and societal issues as well. These same scientists were the first to be seen by their countries as military assets. Fritz Haber, dubbed the "father of chemical warfare," pioneered the use of poison gas in World War I-vividly described-and Glenn Seaborg and Harold Urey were leaders in World War II's Manhattan Project; Urey and Linus Pauling worked for nuclear disarmament after the war. Science was not always fair, and many were excluded. The Nazis pushed Jewish scientists like Haber from their posts in the 1930s. Anti-Semitism was also a force in American chemistry, and few women were allowed in; Pauling, for example, used his influence to cut off the funding and block the publications of his rival, Dorothy Wrinch. Cathedrals of Science paints a colorful portrait of the building of modern chemistry from the late 19th to the mid-20th century.

Bridging Traditions explores the connections between apparently different zones of comprehension and experience—magic and experiment, alchemy and mechanics, practical mathematics and geometrical mysticism, things earthy and heavenly, and especially science and medicine—by focusing on points of intersection among alchemy, chemistry, and Paracelsian medical philosophy. In exploring the varieties of natural knowledge in the early modern era, the authors pay tribute to the work of Allen Debus, whose own endeavors cleared the way for scholars to examine subjects that were once snubbed as suitable only to the refuse heap of the history of science.

Solid-state NMR covers an enormous range of material types and experimental techniques. Although the basic instrumentation and techniques of solids NMR are readily accessible, there can be significant barriers, even for existing experts, to exploring the bewildering array of more sophisticated techniques. In this unique volume, a range of experts in different areas of modern solid-state NMR explain about their area of expertise, emphasising the “practical aspects” of implementing different techniques, and illustrating what questions can and cannot be addressed. Later chapters address complex materials, showing how different NMR techniques discussed in earlier chapters can be brought together to characterise important materials types. The volume as a whole focusses on topics relevant to the developing field of “NMR crystallography” – the use of solids NMR as a complement to diffraction crystallography. This book is an ideal complement to existing introductory texts and reviews on solid-state NMR. New researchers wanting to understand new areas of solid-state NMR will find each chapter to be the equivalent to spending time in the laboratory of an internationally leading expert, learning the hints and tips that make the difference between knowing about a technique and being ready to put it into action. With no equivalent on the market, it will be of interest to every solid-state NMR researcher (academic and postgraduate) working in the chemical sciences.