|
"Chemische Kabinettstcke," the experimental lectures that Roesky has presented throughout Germany have enchanted and enlightened experienced industrial chemists, science teachers, students, and laypersons interested in science. Now 124 of these spectacular demonstrations are presented successfully in book format. Each experiment features sections of safety precautions, apparatus, chemicals, detailed procedure, explanation (including equations when appropriate), disposal, and references (many to articles in the J. Chem. Educ., some as recent as 1993).
Diagrams, structural formulas, tables, and black-and-white photographs as well as 37 beautiful and striking full-color plates on 28 pages are provided. The entire book is printed on heavy, aesthetically pleasing paper.
The unique feature of the book, however, which differentiates it from almost all other collections, is the liberal use of hundreds of fascinating historical, literary, philosophical, and anecdotal facts, lengthy quotations, and aphorisms that the authors have ingeniously integrated with the experiments in accordance with their deeply humanistic approach to science, which stresses the important role of chemistry in our culture and civilization. In this respect, it is a successful amalgam of literature, art, and science.
Besides quotations from scientists and natural philosophers such as Aristotle, Avicenna, Berzelius, Edmund Davy, Einstein, Emil Fischer, Geber, Thomas H. Huxley, Kepler, Liebig, Lucretius, Lichtenberg, Oppenheimer, Paracelsus, Sagan, and Whler, the book contains prose or poetry by Woody Allen, Francis Bacon, Yogi Berra, Cicero, Dali, Dante, Freud, Goethe, van Gogh, E.T.A. Hoffmann, Klee, Lessing, Mann, Marcus Aurelius, Michelangelo, Montaigne, Nietzsche, Petronius, Picasso, Schiller, Schnberg, Mark Twain, and Walt Whitman as well as passages from the Bible and Talmud. This collection of masterpieces of the demonstrator's art is a balanced blend of theater and chemistry and a real bargain.
|
Citation
