Histories Hidden in the Periodic Table

newyorker.com

43 points·appwiz··8 comments

> Another scientist toying with Boyle’s phosphorus found that, “if the Privy Parts be therewith rubb’d, they will be inflamed and burning for a good while after.”

The first test you should do with any unknown substance, yes.

Lol, reminds me of examples like Kopi Luwak coffee beans - somebody, somewhere, followed a type of cat, civet cat, and, once the cat defecated, decided that _that_ cat shit looked most appealing, so why not go ahead and taste it? Or, pore through the shit, extract the beans found in the fecal matter, and make coffee out of those. Why not?

And, thanks to those people's sacrifices, we now get to enjoy good coffee.

It could be that it was perhaps a delicacy to eat cat feces: perhaps it was due to a cat's carnivorous diet, and it could be that one day a cat feces eating guy or gal got a good buzz and made the discovery that that cat had been eating a certain berry. Chasing the buzz they figured out coffee.

My bet would be on famine, a kid, or both.

Alternatively, if you encounter the cat’s faeces after it got dispersed a bit, it may take a while before you realize that the nicer tasting coffee beans you find went through a cat.

If you enjoyed this, I highly recommend “The Disappearing Spoon.” The title is a reference to Gallium’s low melting point, and the book has wonderful histories of most of the elements, and the table itself.

I came to recommend the same thing. It’s a fun read and filled with lots of great science history.

https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Disappearing_Spoon....

Great podcast about the elements in the periodic table:

http://episodictable.com/

I wonder what analogues exist between naming chemical elements and the history of allocating IPv4 addresses or short domain names

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