The Kingdom of the Periodic Table

This post is a review of the quaint little (156 pages) popular science book The Periodic Kingdom by P. W. Atkins. When I was an undergraduate, I had loved the clear expository style of his textbook on quantum mechanics. Though he is a chemist (retired from Oxford) the book was very accessible for a physics student like me. Atkins is in fact an excellent pedagogue and has written about 20 books, some of which are considered market leaders (e.g. Physical Chemistry is a classic).

So when I saw a popular science book by him, I picked it up suspecting that the writing would be good. A second reason for buying the book was that most popular science books address topics like cosmology, astronomy, particle physics, string theory, etc. I haven't seen too many popular science books on chemistry, so my interest was piqued.

As its name implies, the books presents the periodic table of elements as a kingdom. This means that Atkins identifies the 'geography' of the kingdom with the layout of the various elements in the table; 'products' from various regions as applications (iron for steel; carbon for diamonds); 'history' of the kingdom with the discovery and naming of the elements (we learn sulphur was named using Sanskrit) and their cosmological origins (the Big Bang, nucleosynthesis etc.); 'government' with the laws of physics and chemistry which underlie the systematics of the atomic arrangement (Aufbau principle) and so on.

The idea of representing the periodic table as a kingdom is a quaint and colorful conceit and may work well for laypersons. For me it was a mixed experience. Some of the descriptions of the lay of the land using physical properties (color, stability, texture) were disorienting as I am already doctrinated in the organizing principle using atomic number and shell structure (which does show up eventually - so the heavy lifting is not avoided, including some spectroscopic notation).

What the book is rich in is Atkins' storehouse of knowledge about individual elements, their origin, naming, use, appearance and abundance. I learnt a lot of trivia, such as: francium has no practical applications as there are fewer than 20 atoms of it on the planet at any moment; phosphorus is essential for neuronal health; all elements beyond bismuth are radioactive, etc., etc.

Where I think some more work may have been put in the book is the matter of diagrams. There are some: a 'map' of the kingdom, a few molecular orbitals, a graph of ionization energies, a plot of atomic diameters, etc. - a total of 14 figures. Not all the figures are well labeled - some of these tasks have been given to the captions, using which the reader now has to parse the diagram, feeling a bit lost.

More generally, I think an imaginative illustrator could have added a lot of substance and style to the book. This is true especially given the extensive references to the topography and directions of the 'kingdom' which made me flip back and forth a number of times before I gave up. A lot of the colorful suggestions in the prose could have been pictorialized with good effect. A visual guide for each section/repeating icon for each page would have been useful.

Summary

Overall, an entertaining and informative read that does not shy away from necessary details and essential arguments of the relevant science. The writing is crisp for the most part, but some of the technical sections may need plowing through. Something makes me suspect the book would work even better for non-STEM folks who can just ignore the more technical parts (unlike me, who felt obliged to read through them and then got confused).