The Elements: A Very Short Introduction

The Elements: A Very Short Introduction

Author: Philip Ball

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2004-04-08

Total Pages: 193

ISBN-13: 0192840991

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This Very Short Introduction is an exciting and non-traditional approach to understanding the terminology, properties, and classification of chemical elements. It traces the history and cultural impact of the elements on humankind from ancient times through today. Packed with anecdotes, The Elements is a highly engaging and entertaining exploration of the fundamental question: what is the world made from?


Oxygen

Oxygen

Author: Donald E. Canfield

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2015-12-01

Total Pages: 214

ISBN-13: 0691168369

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The remarkable scientific story of how Earth became an oxygenated planet The air we breathe is twenty-one percent oxygen, an amount higher than on any other known world. While we may take our air for granted, Earth was not always an oxygenated planet. How did it become this way? Donald Canfield—one of the world's leading authorities on geochemistry, earth history, and the early oceans—covers this vast history, emphasizing its relationship to the evolution of life and the evolving chemistry of the Earth. Canfield guides readers through the various lines of scientific evidence, considers some of the wrong turns and dead ends along the way, and highlights the scientists and researchers who have made key discoveries in the field. Showing how Earth’s atmosphere developed over time, Oxygen takes readers on a remarkable journey through the history of the oxygenation of our planet.


The Invention of Air

The Invention of Air

Author: Steven Johnson

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2008

Total Pages: 280

ISBN-13: 9781594488528

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Bestselling author Johnson recounts the story of Joseph Priestley--scientist and theologian, protege of Benjamin Franklin--an 18th-century radical thinker who played pivotal roles in the invention of ecosystem science, the founding of the Unitarian Church, and the intellectual development of the U.S.


Oxygen

Oxygen

Author: Nick Lane

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 2002

Total Pages: 385

ISBN-13: 0198607830

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Oxygen offers fresh perspectives on our own lives and deaths, explaining modern killer diseases, why we age, and what we can do about it. Advancing revelatory new ideas, following chains of evidence, the book ranges through many disciplines, from environmental sciences to molecular medicine. Damage to DNA caused by oxidative stress appears to explain aging and many of its diseases, hence the popularity in alternative health circles of antioxidants. But antioxidants alone fail to prevent aging. Lane suggests two different avenues of study: modulation of the immune system, which generates free radicals as part of its defense against infectious diseases; and ways of improving the health of our cellular mitochondria, on which many age-related ailments seem to depend. Provocative and complexly argued. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.


Lavoisier—the Crucial Year

Lavoisier—the Crucial Year

Author: Henry Guerlac

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2019-04-15

Total Pages: 271

ISBN-13: 1501746642

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The author explores the origins of the eighteenth-century chemical revolution as it centers on Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier's earliest work on combustion. He shows that the main lines of Lavoisier's theory—including his theory of a heat-fluid, caloric—were elaborated well before his discovery of the role played by oxygen. Contrary to the opinion prevailing at that time, Lavoisier suspected, and demonstrated by experiment, that common air, or some portion of it, combines with substances when they are burned. Professor Guerlac examines critically the theories of other historians of science concerning these first experiments, and tries to unravel the influences which French, German, and British chemists may have had on Lavoisier. He has made use of newly discovered material on this phase of Lavoisier's career, and includes an appendix in which the essential documents are printed together for the first time.


Chemical Treatise on Air and Fire

Chemical Treatise on Air and Fire

Author: Carl Wilhelm Scheele

Publisher:

Published: 2009-01

Total Pages: 48

ISBN-13: 9781409937739

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Carl Wilhelm Scheele (1742-1786) was a German-Swedish pharmaceutical chemist, born in Stralsund, Western Pomerania, Germany. Instead of becoming a carpenter like his father, Scheele decided to become a pharmacist. His career began with his apprenticeship at an apothecary in Gothenburg when he was only fourteen years old. He retained this position for eight years before becoming an apothecary's clerk in Malmo. Then Scheele worked as a pharmacist in Stockholm, from 1770-1775 in Uppsala, and later in Koping. In 1776, he was able to establish his own pharmacy. He was the discoverer of many chemical substances, most notably discovering oxygen (although Joseph Priestley published his findings first), molybdenum and chlorine before Humphry Davy. Scheele described the discovery of oxygen and nitrogen (1772-1773), in his only book, Chemische Abhandlung von der Luft und dem Feuer (Chemical Treatise on Air and Fire) in 1777. He called it "fire air" because it supported combustion, but he explained oxygen using phlogistical terms because he did not believe that his discovery disproved the phlogiston theory.


A World on Fire

A World on Fire

Author: Joe Jackson

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2007-02-27

Total Pages: 449

ISBN-13: 1440695970

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Like Charles Seife’s Zero and Dava Sobel’s Longitude, this passionate intellectual history is the story of the intersection of science and the human, in this case the rivals who discovered oxygen in the late 1700s. That breakthrough changed the world as radically as those of Newton and Darwin but was at first eclipsed by revolution and reaction. In chronicling the triumph and ruin of the English freethinker Joseph Priestley and the French nobleman Antoine Lavoisier—the former exiled, the latter executed on the guillotine—A World on Fire illustrates the perilous place of science in an age of unreason.


Oxygen Sensing

Oxygen Sensing

Author:

Publisher: Elsevier

Published: 2004-05-10

Total Pages: 867

ISBN-13: 0080497195

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The ability of cells to sense and respond to changes in oxygenation underlies a multitude of developmental, physiological, and pathological processes. This volume provides a comprehensive compendium of experimental approaches to the study of oxygen sensing in 48 chapters that are written by leaders in their fields.