Disappearing Spoon Chp. 3 Summary

Many different, passionate scientists throughout history have shaped the way we know science today. Robert Bunson, best known for significantly improving the burner that everyone that has ever fiddled around with in a school science class, also left a lasting impact on the discovery of elements with his invention of a spectroscope. Bunson and a student took an old cigar box and attached two broken-off eyepieces from telescopes. Their results were incredible - they discovered that every element has a unique signature of colored bands and this knowledge later helped scientists immeasurably by allowing them to determine the presence of specific elements without having to boil them down or disintegrate them with acid. Another significant figure is Dmitri Mendeleev, who is generally credited with the development of the periodic table of elements. He grouped elements together by their properties and eventually was able to not only include all 62 elements known at the time but also to predict where elements that had yet to be discovered would fit and what their general properties would be. He surprised many people in his accuracy of this, including Lecoq de Boisbaudran, who was eventually (after much debate and bickering with Mendeleev) credited with discovering gallium. Among the elements that Mendeleev had predicted but not yet known, were the lanthanides, which are prevalent in Ytterby, a coastal village in Sweden. After interest in a local quarry grew because of the desire to make porcelain, Johan Gadolin made significant progress with isolating several lathanides, characterized by their ability to produce bright pigments when glazes were processed.