Chemistry

“Hydrogen” in German is Wasserstoff, which sounds hilarious except it’s just a literal translation of the Greek hydro-gen!

Most chemical elements are more or less the same in German and English. The fun exceptions are:

• Wasserstoff (Hydrogen); “water stuff” is a literal translation from Greek.
• Kohlenstoff (Carbon); “coal stuff” is a literal translation from Latin.
• Stickstoff (Nitrogen); “suffocation stuff”, apparently because it’s the non-oxygen part of air, is a German original.
• Sauerstoff (Oxygen); “sour stuff” is a literal translation from Greek.

German also has Natrium (Sodium), Kalium (Potassium), Wofram (Tungsten), Quecksilber (Mercury), and Blei (Lead).

The standard Periodic Table is an iconic data visualization, but it’s not the only way to represent the relationships between elements. This beautiful “ribbon” version was designed by James Hyde in the 1970s.

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James Franklin Hyde was a pioneer in the silicone industry, so it’s appropriate that periodic ribbon puts the element silicon in the center and highlights its relationships to the other elements.

Hyde may have been inspired by the spiral chart published by Theodor Benfey in the same journal a few years earlier.

The CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics is a 2600-page tome of random facts and figures, from the speed of sound in various media to the chemical composition of the human body.

My sixth-grade teacher’s copy was one of the most fascinating objects of my childhood, and it still makes me giggle with delight.

To give a taste of what the book is like, here’s an abridged version of section 15-39 “Density of various solids”. The idea that someone would need a handy reference for the density of cardboard, sandstone, butter, and thirty-eight different kinds of wood is hilarious — but they must be the most interesting person in the world!

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Material	Density
Amber	1.06–1.11
Asbestos	2.0–2.8
Asphalt	1.1–1.5
Beeswax	0.96–0.97
Bone	1.7–2.0
Brick	1.4–2.2
Butter	0.86–0.87
Cardboard	0.69
Chalk	1.9–2.8
Charcoal, oak	0.57
Charcoal, pine	0.28–0.44
Clay	1.8–2.6
Cork	0.22–0.26
Diamond	3.51
Gelatin	1.27
Glass	2.4–2.8
Granite	2.64–2.76
Ice	0.917
Iron, cast	7.0–7.4
Limestone	2.68–2.76
Paper	0.7–1.15
Polyethylene	0.92–0.97
Porcelain	2.3–2.5
Quartz	2.65
Rubber, hard	1.19
Sandstone	2.14–2.36
Sugar	1.59
Wood, balsa	0.11–0.14
Wood, bamboo	0.31–0.40
Wood, cedar	0.49–0.57
Wood, mahogany	0.66–0.85
Wood, oak	0.60–0.90