Ion Means Wanderer

For my first two years of high school, I never ate lunch. The cafeteria was chaotic and greasy, and I preferred to spend my lunch hour in the library where I would chat with Mr. Brown, fiddle around the Internet, read in the corner, or wander through the stacks looking at titles.

That was how I first found Atom: Journey Across the Subatomic Cosmos by Isaac Asimov.

The book is, essentially, a history of the discovery of the atom and its associated bits, describing each theory and experiment along the way in layman's terms. So it was written for laymen, but not fourteen-year-olds, and though the book fascinated me, it flew straight over my head.

Since then I've taken my first actual science classes. This past week I looked Atom up in the BYU library, and have been reading it. And I follow it now, I do. It makes me feel so grown up.

Things I like about Atom: 1 - Asimov gives the Greek origin for scientific terms, which is mostly obvious but sometimes interesting. 2 - He pays a lot of attention to scientists as people, especially how their human failings affect the course of scientific discovery. 3 - He details the ways atomic theory developed, from philosophizing to equations to experiments, and uses this to talk about theories in general, what they're for and what they mean. 4 - He carefully explains the exact mechanisms of experiments and the circumstances of accidental discoveries, which helps you to follow the thought processes of all those dead scientists.

I don't know all the details of atomic theory that have changed since Atom was published, and in fact the book so far has made no mention of orbitals or electron clouds, leaving me with the impression of electrons traveling in waving loops around the nucleus. Still, it's a clearly written interesting, history of physics and I like it.