The story that the Oliver Sacks begins in the 1930’s, before World War II. He tell us about his childhood and his curiosity in science, specifically, chemicals. He explains how since he was a child he was interested in, metals and their properties. For example, when he was little he would ask his mom about chemicals, and sometimes his mom wouldn't know how to answer it, but his uncle will answer the questions. His uncle was known as Uncle Tungsten, and it was because he form lightbulb out of tungsten filaments.His Uncle will often demonstrate Oliver chemicals reactions. During those times, Uncle Tungsten taught Oliver that Tungsten was the perfect element. Oliver’s family was well educated that his family was spread around the world studying. But then World War II began. He and his brother were sent to a boarding school named Braefield. There he was mistreated and his parents wouldn't come that often, he felt alone and that affect him mentally. When he got out of school, he imprisoned his dog and the dog almost died. Also his friends from his school notice him different because he wouldn't stand up for himself anymore. However the only thing that he hadn't lost was his interest for chemicals. His uncle, and his parents support and encourage him to do experiments. So he got his own space for experiments at the laundry, there he tries different chemical reactions. Sometimes his experiments will go wrong and he will just throw them in the yard. He was interested in the colors, the smell, and the explosions of his different results of his experiments. His brothers will often help him with his experiments. However when Oliver turned 14, his parents thought that he should stop doing experiments because it was something childish.He became a neurologist but he often misses his experiments. So basically the author’s investigation were chemical reactions, the color, and the smell of his explosions.The area of science that the author integrate in his story was at first metals and then chemicals. At first it was metals because he would ask his mom about her ring. He would often get his mom’s ring and will test with it. He would know a lot about silver, copper, zinc, gold, and many other metals. “I badgered my parents constantly with questions. Where did coor came from? Why did my mother use platinum loop that hung above the stove to cause the gas burner to catch fire?” (Page 5) The Oliver would ask about the properties. “Why were they shinny? Why smooth? Why cool? Why hard? Why heavy? Why did they bend, not break? Why did they ring? Why could two soft metals like zinc and copper, or tin and copper, combine to produce a harder metal?....”(Page 7). Then after he was interest in chemicals composing, and decomposing elements. “I decomposed water, using electrolysis, and then recompose it, sparking hydrogen and oxygen together” (Page 114) Then afterwards he was more into the elements of the periodic table. “ I had, by this time, become familiar with the properties of many elements and I knew they formed a number of natural families, such as the alkali metals, the alkali earth metals, and the halogens” (Page 188) I notice that each of his studies made him get interested in other things. Like when he was interested in metals, then he got interested in the properties. When he see how each metal react to the test of the properties, then he got interested in chemical reactions. He like chemicals, and he had to learn the name for each element he decomposed and composed, and the he like the periodic table. It is like one thing lead to another during his studies.The questions that this book raised was how could he decomposed water. I know that water is made out of one hydrogen and two oxygen, but he said he decomposed water and separate the molecules. I have no idea on how to do that, so I would like to know how he did it. Also did something happen to Braefield (school he went during World War II)? Like did they had any student that was strongly affected by the way it was? For example, it was said that in the school students were mistreated, and the food was scarce, or sometimes not even right to be eaten. Also, when his parents told him that he had to stop with chemicals because he was supposed to become a doctor, what was his brothers reactions? Like, did they support him, or support their dad, and what about Uncle Tungsten?
i do not understand science. most phenomena i just dismiss with accusations of magic: the moon controls the tides?? but they are so far away!! oh, maaaagic!! leap year?? account for thyself!! magic?? got it. how did you make this pluot, sir?? ah, i see you are an alchemist!much of it i have to blame on my high schooling because i have not studied any aspect of the sciences since then, but it's not like i have gone out of my way to do any research now that i am grown. i mean,they do make books after all. but i feel like i lack a foundation for this material and anything i learn at this point with my senile old-lady swiss-cheese brain would be a crumbling waste. i am not a complete sped - biology i get: genetics, reproduction, evolution, chromosomes, etc - i can handle myself in a trivial pursuit scenario, but don't ask me to be making any new species or anything. chemistry was fun when it was hands-on, but i only understood the short-term: do some paper chromatography, blow this shit up - i never really understood the knowledge behind the explosions, i was too dazzled by the craft-project elements. and it is best to not talk about karen and physics in the same sentence.i know that amino acids are a kind of protein molecule because of a singsong rhyme i made up in third-grade to help me study, and i still hum sometimes.this is the extent of my science, although i swear i am going to read this book i have owned for years that makes "science" interesting to me. i had a great teacher for AP english, and i also had him for a class called "reading appreciation" which was a class where students would read quietly for the period and submit a book report/review for every book completed. many students took this as an "easy A" class. i took it because it was like someone offering me a kitten that laid cadbury eggs and would live FOREVER. i opted to take this class instead of AP biology. in retrospect, i probably should have gone with the learning-class, but i was seventeen, and someone was offering me exactly what i wanted. i figured if i really wanted to dissect something, i could just do it in my spare time. my science teachers i remember being very nice and very patient with me, but nothing stuck and no one inspired me to be all gung-ho about science.and while i have been told that i am not stupid, i can't help feeling i am stupid when confronted by things that i just do not understand. and that confusion makes me resentful and makes me lash out and call you all robots and then go sulk in the corner and watch you figure out the half-lives of chemicals. show-off robots. but oliver sacks manages to humanize you science machines.and i am finally getting around to talking about the book.man, oliver sacks... i have never read him before, even though i have heard him speak a number of times when he has given readings at my store. mostly just me half-listening, running around taking care of the books... he always struck me as a very personable older gentleman that people just got all starry-eyed over, but i never understood why. now i get it. he is just a delight. this book is about his early love of chemistry and his enviable understanding of all things chemical. his enthusiasm is seriously contagious and even though i can't get all worked up about it myself, the fact that he is bouncing in his seat over the elegance of the chemical world and how everything is structured and fits perfectly together - well, it makes me see the human underneath all the robot-makeup. i really enjoyed reading this book, even if sometimes i would grumble at a ten-year-old whose understanding of the universe was greater than my own.so i thank you, nick black, for the christmas miracle of allowing me to see how the other half lives, even if i will still refer to evaporation as "water-magic."
What do You think about Uncle Tungsten (2002)?
I went on a mini-Sacks "bender" this year, reading Uncle Tugsten, Musicophilia, and then dipping into one of his earlier books (An Anthropologist on Mars). What I have always loved about Sacks is his ability to present the scientific, social, personal and emotional aspects of his subject as a balanced entity. You can see, through his writings, how he develops a rapport with his patients. Uncle Tungsten is a memoir of Sacks, growing up in Britain under the Blitz, a child of a remarkable family. Perhaps because of the subject, it reminded of my other beloved chemical memoir, Primo Levi's Then Periodic Table. As a chemist, I found Uncle Tungsten to be a wonderful description of the joys that many of us found as children in learning about, and playing with, chemicals- in those pre-litigation times when you could still by "Chemistry Sets".
—Fred Jacobson
This book was just as great on my second readthrough as it was on my first. Sacks has the rare talent to combine science, art, and humanity, and the result is a beautifully written account of both his childhood and the early science of chemistry and the people that were involved. These days it's easy for us to take things like the modern-day conception of a quantum atom for granted, but this book brings you back to a time when this was an amazing discovery and, more than that, tells you exactly why it was such. Definitely recommended reading for chemistry fans.
—S.M. Johnson
A great relating of his childhood, filled with family, science and discovery! From Amazon:Long before Oliver Sacks became a distinguished neurologist and bestselling writer, he was a small English boy fascinated by metals–also by chemical reactions (the louder and smellier the better), photography, squids and cuttlefish, H.G. Wells, and the periodic table. In this endlessly charming and eloquent memoir, the author of The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Awakenings chronicles his love affair with science and the magnificently odd and sometimes harrowing childhood in which that love affair unfolded.In Uncle Tungsten we meet Sacks’ extraordinary family, from his surgeon mother (who introduces the fourteen-year-old Oliver to the art of human dissection) and his father, a family doctor who imbues in his son an early enthusiasm for housecalls, to his “Uncle Tungsten,” whose factory produces tungsten-filament lightbulbs. We follow the young Oliver as he is exiled at the age of six to a grim, sadistic boarding school to escape the London Blitz, and later watch as he sets about passionately reliving the exploits of his chemical heroes–in his own home laboratory. Uncle Tungsten is a crystalline view of a brilliant young mind springing to life, a story of growing up which is by turns elegiac, comic, and wistful, full of the electrifying joy of discovery.
—Ron
