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Here’s a bullet-gist of quotes from The Disappearing Spoon by Sam Kean with examples or context for each:
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“Never underestimate spite as a motivator for genius.”
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Example: Chemists in the 19th century often raced to discover elements just to outdo rivals, like how Robert Bunsen and Gustav Kirchhoff pushed spectroscopy partly to beat competitors.
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“If anything runs deeper than a mathematician’s love of variables, it’s a scientist’s love of constants.”
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Example: Scientists obsess over constants like Planck’s constant or the speed of light—they’re fixed and allow experiments to be repeatable and predictable.
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“Lithium tweaks many mood‑altering chemicals in the brain … Most interesting, lithium seems to reset the body’s circadian rhythm … Bipolar people run on cycles independent of the sun. And run and run.”
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Example: Lithium salts are used as medication for bipolar disorder because they stabilize mood and regulate sleep-wake cycles.
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“Think of the most fussy science teacher you ever had … Now try to imagine someone whom your teacher would hate … That is the kind of person who works for a bureau of standards and measurement.”
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Example: People who maintain the international kilogram or define the standard meter are obsessively precise, making sure nothing is off by even a microgram or nanometer.
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“Even a good, inveterate atheist like physicist Richard Feynman once said of the fine structure constant … ‘It’s one of the greatest damn mysteries of physics: … a magic number … You might say the ‘hand of God’ wrote that number …’”
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Example: The fine-structure constant (~1/137) appears in equations describing electromagnetic interactions, and physicists still wonder why it has exactly this value.
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“A few years later, Mendeleev, now famous, divorced his wife and wanted to remarry … the tsar primly replied, ‘I admit, Mendeleev has two wives, but I have only one Mendeleev.’”
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Example: This anecdote humorously shows the fame of Dmitri Mendeleev—his importance to Russia’s scientific reputation outweighed personal scandal.
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“So if big enough droplets fell … someone … could have looked up … and seen the most spectacular show ever … fireworks … a trillion streaks of brilliant crimson … neon rain.”
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Example: Refers to chemical reactions in certain gases or metals producing vivid colors—like neon lighting or fireworks chemistry.
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“Since before even the ancient Egyptians … human beings used the stars and seasons to track time … Cesium severed that link with the heavens … just as surely as urban streetlamps blot out constellations.”
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Example: Atomic clocks using cesium define the second precisely, independent of Earth’s rotation or sunlight—modern timekeeping no longer relies on nature.
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“Chance favors only the prepared mind.”
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Example: Many discoveries, like penicillin, were serendipitous—but only a prepared scientist like Alexander Fleming recognized the importance of mold growing on bacteria.
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If you want, I can also make a super-short “bullet + example” table for all 20–25 major quotes in the book—perfect for quick revision or notes. Do you want me to do that?
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