Chemistry - the Game Played by Atoms

By ROBERT G. THOMAS and David H. Levy

ChemistryThe Game Played by Atoms
by R. G. Thomas

Book Summary

Imagine that you are part of a group watching an unfamiliar game in progress. Your group does not have a rule book and there is no way to access a list of the game rules. This is exactly the situation in which early chemists found themselves as they step by step unraveled many of the mysterious rules for the game of chemistry.
Someone completely unfamiliar with the game of basketball, if completely dedicated to the task, should be able to figure out many of the game rules just by watching the game as it is being played. For the early chemists the situation was much more difficult since neither the players nor the game ball are visible. They knew something was going on but were unable to begin to understand the game until they were able to identify the players and the game ball.
The rules for basketball have been changed so that some shots are now worth three points. This change was made by the people regulating the game in an effort to make the game more interesting for the spectators. Other changes have been made to please the companies which advertise on television. Even a unanimous vote by the members of the American Chemical Society cannot change any of the rules of chemistry. Unfortunately there is no way to change the rules of chemistry to make it more interesting although this book attempts to present chemistry in a manner which is more interesting than the exposure many students find in a traditional chemistry course.
ChemistryThe Game Played by Atoms is an unique presentation of the evolution of chemistry written for both the general reading public and beginning science students. It is intended for the curious reader, with or without a scientific background. In the authors search of libraries and bookstores he was unable to find a book for the general reader which deals with the overall nature of chemistry.
ChemistryThe Game Played by Atoms presents chemistry as a game. Discovering the rules for chemistry has not been easy. Using the observations made by a number of great scientists the reader is led through the discovery of the basic game rules. The concise historical development of the logic leading to the understanding of the chemical elements includes interaction with what might be called the human element. Information about many of the more observant scientists is included to show that they were interesting people rather than just names to be memorized in connection with scientific discoveries. Many of these basic explanations of why chemists believe as they do cannot be found in the usual chemistry textbooks.
Chemistry--The Game Played by Atoms is not a textbook. This book does not require the reader to memorize facts, balance chemical equations, prepare for exams, or use complicated mathematics to solve problems. Each chapter of this book begins by comparing the game of chemistry with aspects of other well known games. Each chapter is long enough to thoroughly present the development of a basic chemical concept, but short enough that the concept is not lost in unnecessary detail.
Following is a list of the titles of the chapters. Some of the titles do not clearly indicate the contents of the chapter unless you read the chapter. But this list should give the prospective reader a better idea of the nature of this book.


Chapter 1 The Game of Chemistry
Chapter 2 In Search of a Game
Chapter 3 The False Start
Chapter 4 A Good Second Serve
Chapter 5 The Players
Chapter 6 The Game Roster
Chapter 7 The Game Ball
Chapter 8 A Closer Look at the Players
Chapter 9 Sizing Up the Situation
Chapter 10 Passing and Catching Abilities
Chapter 11 The Playing Fields

Chapter 12 Game Ball Dynamics
Chapter 13 Team Players
Chapter 14 Team Shape
Chapter 15 Sticking Together
Chapter 16 The Passing Game
Chapter 17 Spectators on the Playing Field
Chapter 18 A Different Game Ball
Chapter 19 Another Game Pl

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Mar 9, 2005
• ISBN: 9781465333995

ROBERT G. THOMAS

Short Author Biography Robert Garrett Thomas, the author of Chemistry—The Game Played by Atoms, taught high school chemistry and physics in Tucson, Arizona. He coached the school chess team to three national championships and the Science Olympiad team to many state championships. His other activities include: chess tournament director; telescope observer; community college instructor; and active in professional organizations. Retired, he now spends his time playing tennis, walking, playing duplicate bridge, traveling, writing, and planning a solar efficient dream home. He and his wife, Mary Lou, live in Tucson. They have six grown children, twelve grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren.

Book preview

CHEMISTRY—

THE GAME PLAYED

BY ATOMS

RG THOMAS

Copyright © 2005 by RG Thomas.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced

or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or

mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any

information storage and retrieval system, without permission in

writing from the copyright owner.

This book was printed in the United States of America.

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

Xlibris Corporation

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

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27123

Contents

Foreword

Author’s Introduction

Chapter 1

The Game of Chemistry

Chapter 2

In Search of a Game

Chapter 3

The False Start

Chapter 4

A Good Second Serve

Chapter 5

The Players

Chapter 6

The Game Roster

Chapter 7

The Game Ball

Chapter 8

A Closer Look at the Players

Chapter 9

Sizing Up the Situation

Chapter 10

Passing and Catching Abilities

Chapter 11

The Playing Fields

Chapter 12

Game Ball Dynamics

Chapter 13

Forming Teams

Chapter 14

Team Shape

Chapter 15

Sticking Together

Chapter 16

The Passing Game

Chapter 17

Spectators on the Playing Field

Chapter 18

A Different Game Ball

Chapter 19

Another Game Plan

Chapter 20

Playing Conditions

Chapter 21

The Way the Ball Bounces

Chapter 22

Future Games

Foreword

Even as she grew up in New York City, Gertrude Elion was always interested in science, but her drive to develop cancer-fighting drugs was spurred as she graduated high school by the death of her grandfather from stomach cancer. Watching his suffering was a turning point in her life; she decided to pursue a career in science to find a cure for cancer. Even though she graduated with honors from New York’s Hunter College, Elion was rejected by all 15 graduate schools she applied to. In 1941, Elion’s fiance’s death of a bacterial infection further motivated her to pursue chemistry, and during World War 2 she found a job at a pharmaceutical company. By 1950, Elion’s perseverance was starting to pay off. She synthesized a drug that was later found to help cure childhood leukemia. Just nine years later, a drug she developed was used to transplant a kidney into a German shepherd named Lollipop, and therefore opened up the new field of organ transplants. Her work in drugs and chemotherapy earned her the 1988 Nobel Prize in Physiology of Medicine.

The world of chemistry is exciting because, like my own field of astronomy, it offers the chance for discovery. I remember as a child being enthralled by the story of Marie Curie, and also, as many young people were and are, with my first chemistry set. Chemistry lies at one end of a spectrum of sciences: while astronomy deals with the nature of the Universe and its great clusters of galaxies; chemistry explores, at a level invisible to all save those with atomic microscopes, how it’s all made.

Chemistry is about elements, but it’s also about people and dreams. It’s about Kekulé, who spent years trying to understand how benzene, the parent substance to thousands of useful materials, is structured. While visiting Ghent around 1865, Kekulé fell asleep in front of the fire, and dreamed of snakes slithering about, coiling around one another. He awoke with a start, and quickly made notes of his dream: benzene was structured as a ring of six carbon atoms, each one connected to an atom of hydrogen.

Chemistry is also about Joseph Priestley, whose experimenting with gases led to his discovering a strange thing he called dephlogisticated air. Few of us know what that means, but we can’t live without the gas we now call oxygen, so Priestley’s find was one of the most important in modern science. Years later Priestley’s laboratory and manuscripts were destroyed by an angry English mob—not because they disliked chemistry, but because they disagreed with his political views.

Chemistry is also about Marie Curie, who a century ago carefully worked with eight tons of pitchblende to isolate a tiny gram of radium. I remember being fascinated by her story as I was growing up. All these stories display chemistry as the exciting science that it is, a way to understand how the Universe works. In the pages you are about to read, you will see how chemistry functions, how its practitioners follow their way through it, and how it can provide a lifelong interest for you. May your reaction—pardon the pun—be a positive one!

David H. Levy

Author’s Introduction

At the first high school football game of a new school year I sat next to one of my chemistry students, an exchange student from northern Italy. Because she had never before seen an American football game she seemed to be very confused. She was trying to figure out the rules of the game from her observations, but was having little success. Why do they keep stopping the game? Why does one of the teams keep gathering into a circle? Why isn’t the ball round? Why do the players wear so much protective gear, are they sissies? Italian ball players are tougher; they wear only shorts and a tee-shirt.

I wasn’t much help. Most of my answers were basically That is just how the game is played!

A few years later I was accepted into a teacher exchange program. For one year I traded my home, my car, and my teaching position in Arizona for the home, car, and teaching position of a chemistry teacher from northern England. We kept our wives and children with us in the exchange.

One of my first experiences upon arriving in London was to watch a championship cricket game on television. For the first time I began to appreciate the situation that my student from Italy had experienced. Cricket seemed to be similar to baseball, but a number of things were different. A great deal of time seemed to be spent rubbing color from the little red ball onto the pitcher’s white trousers. I had learned to call them trousers, not pants. In England pants are underwear! Why was there only one base? Why did they always bounce the ball that was pitched? Why did they stop in the middle of the game for tea? What was the point of the game? Why didn’t they stop the play when one team had over a hundred runs more than the other? Using only my observations I tried to formulate some of the rules for cricket, but had only limited success.

The following April my family was seated on a train quietly playing a card game. We were traveling to London after a quick visit to Paris. A large group of students from France, also on spring break, crowded onto the train. They were forced to stand since all of the seats were occupied. At first only a couple of the students watched our card game. Then one of them noticed that by playing a ten the direction of play was reversed. He mentioned this to his neighbor. This attracted the attention of some of the other students. One of them noticed that the play of a four caused the next player to lose his or her turn. Another student pointed out that the play of a nine caused the color of trump to change. Each card seemed to have a different effect on the game. Soon there was a noisy crowd captivated by every play of the game as they tried to figure out the function of each of the cards. The game was Creights which my family had found in the 1984 edition of Games magazine.

After these three experiences I began defining chemistry as the game played by atoms. Years later I am still finding similarities between chemistry and other games. When introduced to a new game anyone who cannot make reasonable progress in figuring out the rules may quickly form a dislike for the game. This also applies to a school subject like chemistry. As chemists accumulate more and more knowledge about their subject there is a tendency for the chemistry textbooks to crowd out much of the historical evolution of the basic concepts to make room for this new information. As a result, beginning chemistry students are often tossed into a large pool of factual knowledge and are expected to swim their way to an understanding of chemistry. I have found that students find that the game of chemistry can be exciting and enjoyable if the rules are explained in a reasonable way and developed in a logical order.

Card games are not nearly as complicated as chemistry. What amazed me about the observations of the French students as they watched us play cards was not that they were able to figure out most of the rules. It was the excitement and joy they expressed as they figured out these rules. I doubt if they would have found the game as interesting if they were simply asked to read the set of rules for the card game.

Theoretically the ideal approach to learning the rules for chemistry would be to give each student firsthand experience of each of the major discoveries that have lead to our present day understanding of chemistry. This is not practical or necessary. The French students made their discoveries as part of a group, not just individually. A well written book can help lead students through the discovery of the basic concepts of chemistry in an interesting way.

I compare a typical modern chemistry text to a mystery book which has many pages of descriptive dialog and factual material, but makes little attempt to explain the how or why of the mystery. A mystery book is very dull if there is no attempt to lead (and sometimes mislead) the reader through logical interpretations of the clues. Most chemistry texts are very dull.

This book is an attempt to explain the evolution of what is called chemistry. It also tries to show that most of chemistry can be explained logically without complex mathematical or scientific concepts beyond the grasp of the reader of ordinary intelligence. This book is based on materials which I developed during my many years as a chemistry teacher. I believe that this book will be of interest to non-chemists interested in finding out about chemistry as an intellectual adventure. I also hope that current chemistry students, as well as anyone who has been exposed to a chemistry class in their past, will find that this book will develop some of the historical mystery and logical beauty that should be involved in the study of chemistry.

Robert Garrett Thomas

Chapter 1

The Game of Chemistry

Chemistry—the game played by atoms. This is the definition of chemistry used throughout this book. There are similarities between the game of chemistry and the games in which people are the players. There are also differences. This chapter will compare the game of chemistry to other games to provide some insight about the topics to be explored in the following chapters.

There are many ways in which the game of chemistry is similar to other games. In many games the focus is on what happens to the game ball. In chemistry the game balls are usually electrons. Chemists are often concerned about the activity of electrons although there are situations in which the chemical game balls can be protons. In sports there are games in which the players cooperate as a team and other games in which an individual player acts without the help of team members. In chemistry there are atoms which are definitely team players and others who don’t play well with others.

It is much easier for us to follow the action of a human game than the play in a chemical game. Because we cannot see the individual chemical players in action we need to observe changes in color, temperature, texture, and similar indications which indicate that a chemical change has taken place. Much of what we know about chemistry is the result of careful observation of these changes. But we can be more than merely observers of the game of chemistry. We can act as coaches as we can control which players play in different situations. By experimenting with different combinations of players we can find out which players we would like to put in an important game to get the desired results.

Chemistry has definite rules just like any game played by humans. One difference is that in the game of chemistry there is only one set of rules which never changes. Many years ago the rules for the game of chess were changed so that a player can now, once in each game, move two chess pieces in what counts as a single move. In this move, castling, the king moves two squares toward the rook and the rook jumps over the king to a square next to the king. There is no other move in which the king can move more than one square or the rook can jump over another piece. The primary reason for changing the rules of chess to include this unusual move was to speed up the game. Before this rule was introduced chess players had to make many moves in order to position the rook where it had more freedom and also have the king in a somewhat protected position at one side of the chess board.

In basketball the rules have been changed to include 3-point shots. This makes the game more interesting. Unfortunately the rules which control how atoms play their game cannot be changed to make chemistry more interesting. An organization like the American Chemical Society cannot change the rules controlling how atoms interact. They might be able describe new rules which have recently been discovered, but these new rules would not change the play of the game. They would better describe an aspect of the chemistry game that had not been previously understood.

Many chemists think that most of the very basic chemistry rules have been discovered by now. Most of what is needed today is probably the fine tuning of some of these rules so that they more accurately describe what the atoms actually do. But there may be some surprises. A few years ago astronomers thought that most of the basic astronomy was fairly well understood. But with the Hubble telescope and other high tech equipment astronomers are finding out that the universe is much more complicated than they had thought. There have been instances in which chemists have completely misunderstood what was going in the game of chemistry. It is possible to observe a game being played and to misinterpret what is happening. As the number of observations increases it is hoped that better understanding of the true nature of the game is possible.

In professional sports the rules need to make the game interesting, reduce the risk of injury to the players, and provide adequate opportunities for television advertising. The introduction of the use of replays to reduce bad calls by the officials seemed like it should improve the game of football. But, because these replays slowed down the game, the fans found the game to be less interesting. A compromise has been reached so that only a limited number of replays can be used in each game. This makes it possible to closely examine especially critical plays while avoiding excessive delay of the game.

If the reason for a rule is not understood, then such a rule is sometimes ignored even if it is a good rule. In chess, to speed up the game, a pawn is allowed on its first move to go forward two squares rather