The Disappearing Spoon: And Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World from the Periodic Table

Chapter 16 addresses what happens when elements are subjected to extreme temperatures and pressure.

For instance, carbon turns to diamond under extreme pressure. And pure tin changes its crystal structure under various conditions. There are wintertime “legends about expensive tin pipes on new church organs exploding into ash the instant the organist blasted his first chord” (280).

In fact, it was thanks to the effect of cold on tin, that the team led by English explorer Robert Scott on a 1912 expedition to the South Pole died of “starvation, scurvy, dehydration, hypothermia, and gangrene” (278). The team laid provisions like bread crumbs along their path for later retrieval. But the heating fuel was stored in tin canisters, and the tin turned to powder in the Antarctic cold, spilling fuel all over the food.

Temperature also affects a matter’s state. Matter exists mainly in four states, depending on temperature: solids, liquids, gases, and plasmas, or super-heated atoms whose electrons get stripped off, especially in stars. Other states exist, including “superconductors and superfluid helium” and “quark-gluon plasma” (281). Kean explains that “[c]olloids like Jell-O are blends of two states” (281).

Kean states, “In solids, atoms line up in a repetitive, three-dimensional array” (282).