The New Alchemists: Breaking Through the Barriers of High Pressure - Hardcover

Hazen, Robert M.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0812922751 ISBN 13: 9780812922752

Publisher: Times Books / Random House, 1993

Synopsis

Spanning centuries of top-notch science, bitter rivalry, outright fraud, and self-delusion, the author weaves a narrative centered around the brilliant, often eccentric, and controversial pioneers of high-pressure research. These new alchemists have subjected ordinary beach sand to tons of pressure to shed light on the extinction of the dinosaurs, learned that gases such as hydrogen and oxygen become dense metals lying deep inside large planets, and have transformed almost any carbon-rich material into diamonds. Annotation copyright Book News, Inc. Portland, Or.

About this title

About the Author

Robert M. Hazen is Robinson Professor of Earth Science at George Mason University.

Reviews

YA-A surprisingly intriguing resource and a quick read. Hazen takes readers from the initial formation and discovery of diamonds through current attempts to produce them from carbon-containing items. He makes comparisons to the allotrope graphite, and to the buckeyball-the most recently discovered allotrope. Readers are made aware of the cost (sometimes in human life) of the discovery of these elements. By clearly explaining the chemistry of allotropes of carbon and by giving examples and analogies to help clarify the more difficult concepts, this book informs and entertains. Its academic appearance and dreary photographs are misleading. Presented almost like a human-interest story, the narrative is filled with details that bring the information to life. A catchy introduction relates how substances such as a spoonful of peanut butter can be transformed into precious diamonds. A fine research tool.
Donna West, W.T. Woodson High School, Fairfax, VA
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Despite the broad scope implied in the title, Hazen ( Science Matters ) focuses on the fairly short recent history of the quest to synthesize diamonds for industrial use. The science itself is tantalizingly simple (diamonds are pure carbon and carbon is abundant), and Hazen's account covers the search for the right machine --a pressure mechanism capable of imitating simple forces found in nature. That effort has been the obsession of General Electric engineers since the 1940s. Their experiments were all variations on a theme--force acting at the molecular level. It's a theme that Hazen never makes quite tangible in this overlong chronicle that concentrates more on the lab, the weather and the personalities than on science. The production of synthetic diamonds is unquestionably a success story with a significant impact on 20th-century life and industry. Hazen notes, however, that the greater impact will be made by a new substance, buckminsterfullerine, the third carbon, discovered only three years ago.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The ancient alchemists sought for gold, but the new alchemists have found diamonds--in nearly unlimited quantities, and just a good squeeze away--reports Hazen (Science/George Mason University; coauthor, Science Matters, 1992, etc.) in this sparkling gem of technological history. The trick is getting that squeeze exactly right. Diamonds form naturally one hundred miles below the earth's surface, where the pressure is one hundred pounds per square inch. How many are there? ``Billions of tons of diamonds,'' says Hazen, who loves to drop stunning statistics. When the rare handful reaches sea level--only through volcanic activity, it seems--everyone wants them, for their beauty, their hardness (more atoms per cubic inch than any other substance), their refraction (light passing through a diamond is slowed to 80,000 miles per second). But can we make them in the lab? Early attempts resulted in catastrophic explosions. Then came Percy Bridgman, a Harvard wizard who broke the high-pressure barrier by inventing a press that could squash ``just about everything he could get his hands on''--an invention that won him a Nobel in 1946. In the early 1950's, a weird Swedish firm, basing their research on clues in Norse mythology, managed to synthesize a few diamonds--but the real triumph came with the work of Tracy Hall at General Electric in the mid-50's. By 1960, everyone was making diamonds from all sorts of substances, even peanut butter. Today, the quest for higher pressures continues, using synthesized-diamond anvils (one millibar has been reached, ``the pressure you'd feel underneath a stone monument roughly 2000 miles tall'') and leading to new models of the earth's interior and the possible discovery of new exotic substances, such as metallic hydrogen. Multifaceted, and glittering with drama and wit. (B&w photographs, line drawings) -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Diamonds have been treasured by humans for thousands of years. Nearly indestructible, pure diamonds are superb electrical insulators, efficient conductors of heat energy, and the most brilliant of gems. No wonder attempts to synthesize diamonds date back to the early 1800s, shortly after the jewel was shown to be a form of carbon. Hazen, coauthor of Science Matters ( LJ 1/91), uses this intriguing tale of diamond making as a framework to describe the world of high-pressure science, the study of matter exposed to extreme conditions. Over half the book describes diamond synthesis, with Hazen revealing key players, from solitary genius Percy Bridgeman to colorful and controversial George Kennedy. The latter part of the book recounts high-pressure science over the past 30 years, including design of the diamond cell, attainment of the megabar, and attempts to create metallic hydrogen. Hazen exposes struggles, rivalries, failures, and successes in a captivating story not widely available outside the technical literature. For general science collections.
- Nancy Chipman-Shlaes, Governors State Univ., University Park, Ill.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Times Books / Random House
• Publication date: 1993
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0812922751
• ISBN 13: 9780812922752
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 304