6 days Ago
IT’S A GAS: The Magnificent and Elusive Elements That Expand Our World . By Mark Miodownik. Mariner Books.
304 pages. $28.99.
For those who suffered through chemistry class convinced that the Periodic Table actually was a manual for alien tortures, Mark Miodownik has a belated, but welcome, antidote. He makes the whole thing interesting. “It’s a Gas” is truth in advertising.
“In outer space it is invisible gas that creates the stars, on Earth it makes our planet habitable,” writes the author. “We are enveloped by it, we breathe it, and it saturates us — fumes, vapors, dampness, scents and toxins — all affect our moods, health and behavior. And yet for most of our lives, we overlook the wonders of gases.
” Why? Well, because they are invisible, colorless and odorless. While the ancients witnessed the effects of gases and thought them the work of the gods, we moderns generally take for granted their critical functions in sustaining life on Earth. Not to mention powering many of our key technologies.
“And yet like the sorcerer’s apprentice, we have employed these powerful spirits without properly understanding how to control them,” says Miodownik, an engineer and professor of materials and society at University College London, where he is also director of the Institute of Making. Miodownik is the author of “Stuff Matters,” winner of the National Academy of Sciences Communication Award, and “Liquid Rules,” a finalist for the Royal Society Book Prize. He is a frequent guest and host on NPR and the BBC.
Miodownik’s breezy writing style guarantees he never gets bogged down in dry recitation of facts, though he never shortchanges the science. There are surprises on almost every page. From Thomas Newcomen, James Watt and the invention of the steam engine to how gas technologies both power the world and affect global economics and politics, the author reacquaints us with all the vital gases and their specific properties.
But he also recounts the many researchers and inventors whose work provided the keys to understanding (and utilizing) these properties, like the great British scientist Humphry Davy. Steam is a typically underappreciated example. Steam trains made a different life possible, expanding the horizons of a great many of the world’s people.
Although it has been supplanted by petroleum, diesel and electric engines, steam still is used to produce 70 percent of the world’s electricity. Without it, civilization comes to a screeching halt. Methane, oxygen, nitrogen and all their cousins are indispensable, as is carbon dioxide, though the last of these presents an environmental quandary.
Carbon dioxide is one of the gases that controls the Earth’s thermostat, but today’s elevated levels of the gas in our atmosphere contribute mightily to global warming. In one of the most informative sections of the book, the author demonstrates why dealing with this imbalance is a far more complex problem than many suppose, with intractable scientific and political hurdles, and no clear path forward. Miodownik succeeds in exploring how gases became our physiological, technical and emotional life-support system, “how they breathe life into us, determine our weather and climate, fuel both our technology and our magical beliefs, and make eating so delicious.
” Let’s not forget human exhalations and how they bring wind instruments alive, from the oboe to the tuba, or how our sense of smell is our means of “grasping” gas, sampling the air to detect dangers and embrace delights. When it comes to gases, it’s a case of not seeing is believing..
