{"author":"Sam Kean","author_id":"Sam+Kean","total_quotes":18,"quotes":[{"text":"When you do the math and examine how much energy is produced per atomic union, you find that fusing anything to iron’s twenty-six protons costs energy. That means post-ferric fusion* does an energy-hungry star no good. Iron is the final peal of a star’s natural life.","author":"Sam Kean","tags":["atoms","elements","energy","iron","stars"],"id":11897,"author_id":"Sam+Kean"},{"text":"The color of the emitted light depends on the relative heights of the starting and ending energy levels. A crash between closely spaced levels (such as two and one) releases a pulse of low-energy reddish light, while a crash between more widely spaced levels (say, five and two) releases high-energy purple light.","author":"Sam Kean","tags":["chemical-reactions","electron-shell","electrons","energy","light"],"id":37510,"author_id":"Sam+Kean"},{"text":"Germans at the time believed, a little oddly, that dyes killed germs by turning the germs’ vital organs the wrong color.","author":"Sam Kean","tags":["germany","humorous","microbes","microbiology","oddity"],"id":43969,"author_id":"Sam+Kean"},{"text":"In fact, his travelogues spend amazingly little time discussing his blindness. Only one passage stands out for its frank discussion of his handicap and how it changed his worldview. In it, Holman was reminiscing about a few rendezvous from his past. Disarmingly, he admitted that he had no idea what his paramours looked like, or even whether they were homely. Moreover, he didn't care: by abandoning the standards of the sighted world, he argues, he could tap into a more divine and more authentic beauty. Hearing a woman's voice and feeling her caresses -- and then filling in what was missing with his own fancy -- gave him more pleasure than the mere sight of a women ever had, he said, a pleasure beyond reality. 'Are there any who imagine,' Holman asked, 'that my loss of eyesight must necessarily deny me the enjoyment of such contemplation? How much more do I pity the mental darkness which could give rise to such an error.","author":"Sam Kean","tags":["beauty","blind","blindness","disability","handicap","resilience"],"id":59682,"author_id":"Sam+Kean"},{"text":"Yet they enjoy the high. In the surest sign that selenium actually makes them go mad, cattle grow addicted to locoweed despite its awful side effects and eat it to the exclusion of anything else. It’s animal meth.","author":"Sam Kean","tags":["addiction","interesting","locoweed","selenium"],"id":71990,"author_id":"Sam+Kean"},{"text":"Atoms consist of a positive nucleus and negative electrons flying around outside it. Electrons closest to the nucleus feel a strong negative-on-positive tug, and the bigger atoms get, the bigger the tug. In really big atoms, electrons whip around at speeds close to the speed of light.","author":"Sam Kean","tags":["light","strong","negative "],"id":82995,"author_id":"Sam+Kean"},{"text":"For his part, Mendeleev scanned Lecoq de Boisbaudran’s data on gallium and told the experimentalist, with no justification, that he must have measured something wrong, because the density and weight of gallium differed from Mendeleev’s predictions. This betrays a flabbergasting amount of gall, but as science philosopher-historian Eric Scerri put it, Mendeleev always “was willing to bend nature to fit his grand philosophical scheme.” The only difference between Mendeleev and crackpottery is that Mendeleev was right: Lecoq de Boisbaudran soon retracted his data and published results that corroborated Mendeleev’s predictions.","author":"Sam Kean","tags":["dimitri-mendeleev","elements","gallium","humorous","lecoq-de-boisbaudran","periodic-table"],"id":148246,"author_id":"Sam+Kean"},{"text":"There are a few elements - especially platinum and palladium - that have the amazing ability to absorb up to 900 times their own volume in hydrogen gas. To get a sense of the scale there, that's roughly equivalent to a 250-pound man swallowing something the size of a dozen African bull elephants and not gaining an inch on his waistline.","author":"Sam Kean","tags":["man","size","ability "],"id":173242,"author_id":"Sam+Kean"},{"text":"Even fictional characters sometimes receive unwarranted medical opinions. Doctors have diagnosed Ebenezer Scrooge with OCD, Sherlock Holmes with autism, and Darth Vader with borderline personality disorder.","author":"Sam Kean","tags":["personality","opinions "],"id":176751,"author_id":"Sam+Kean"},{"text":"Think of the most fussy science teacher you ever had. The one who docked your grade if the sixth decimal place in your answer was rounded incorrectly; who tucked in his periodic table T-shirt, corrected every student who said 'weight' when he or she meant 'mass', and made everyone, including himself, wear goggles even while mixing sugar water. Now try to imagine someone whom your teacher would hate for being anal-retentive. That is the kind of person who works for a bureau of standards and measurement.","author":"Sam Kean","tags":["amusing","humour","science"],"id":212664,"author_id":"Sam+Kean"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":18,"pages":2,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}