Quotes by : Sam Kean

Germans at the time believed, a little oddly, that dyes killed germs by turning the germs’ vital organs....

In these days before antiseptics, doctors themselves also suffered high mortality rates. Florence Nightingale,....

In fact, his travelogues spend amazingly little time discussing his blindness. Only one passage stands....

For his part, Mendeleev scanned Lecoq de Boisbaudran’s data on gallium and told the experimentalist,....

All we know for sure is that if some astronomer turned a telescope to a far-off star cluster tonight....

Atoms consist of a positive nucleus and negative electrons flying around outside it. Electrons closest....

There are a few elements - especially platinum and palladium - that have the amazing ability to absorb....

All the elements other than hydrogen and helium make up just 0.04 percent of the universe. Seen from....

This hinted at something that no one had ever suspected -- that the brain tracks moving things more easily....

Also unlike a planet, an electron—if excited by heat or light—can leap from its low-energy shell....