Contents -- Acknowledgements -- Introduction -- 1. The Age of the Earth - An Age-Old Question Who thought what and when, and why -- Pre-Scientific Theories -- in the Beginning -- The Transition to Modern Thinking -- The Beginnings of Geological Dating -- Radioactive Dating -- the Gap Widens -- Views Reconciled - Sources of the Missing Energy -- Plate Tectonics and Continental Uplift -- To Sum Up -- 2. Atoms Old and New From Democritus to Rutherford -- Atomic Theory in Ancient Times -- The Transition to Modern Thinking -- The Scientific Revolution and the Revival of Corpuscular Theory - 1600-1700 -- Early Modern Theory - 1780-1840 -- Evidence from the Behaviour of Gases (To Around 1860) -- Structural Chemistry, 1870 On -- Einstein and Lucretius -- The Modern Era -- To Sum Up -- 3. The Banker Who Lost His Head Lavoisier, gunpowder, revolution, and the birth of modern chemistry -- A Civil Servant Scientist -- Reform, Revolution, and the Terror -- Guinea Pig, Mesmerism, and Placebo -- Chemistry, Elements, and The Elements of Chemistry -- In The Rearview Mirror -- To Sum Up -- 4. From Particles to Molecules, with A Note On Homoeopathy Dalton, Avogadro, Cannizzaro -- why did it take so long for the penny to drop? -- Obscure but Famous -- The Development of Dalton's Thinking -- Dalton's Atomic Theory -- A Note On Homoeopathy -- To Sum Up -- 5. The Discovery of the Noble Gases - What's so New About Neon? A tiny difference in density leads to a whole new group of elements -- Hidden in Plain Sight -- An Extraterrestrial Element -- "That's Funny …" -- An Answer, but More Questions -- Six for the Price of One -- Implications -- To Sum Up -- 6. Science, War, and Morality -- The Tragedy of Fritz Haber Ammonia, explosives, fertiliser, gas warfare, and the most unintended of consequences -- Early Life and Career.

Simple Reaction, Complex Problem, Major Importance -- Heterogeneous Catalysts and How They Work -- The Engineering Challenge -- Haber's Expanding Role -- Consequences -- Chemical Weapons Today -- Fertilisers, Population, and the Haber Process -- Further Prospects -- Conclusions -- To Sum Up -- 7. The Ozone Hole Story - A Mystery with Three Suspects Volcano, refrigerator, or jet plane? -- The Victim -- The Crime -- The Investigation -- Suspect #1: Nitrogen Oxides -- Suspect #2: Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), e.g. CF2Cl2 -- Suspect #3: Volcanic Emissions -- Political Pressures. Whistle-Blowers Vindicated -- Passing Sentence -- Connections and Ramifications -- To Sum Up -- 8. Rain Gauge, Thermometer, Calendar, Warning What a stalagmite tells us about climate past -- what history tells us about climate future -- The Stalagmite's Story -- The Tree Ring's Tale,5 and Other Stories -- Elsewhere on the Planet -- To Sum Up -- 9. Making Metal Iron from the sky. Philistines and Phoenicians. Domestic uses of arsenic. Eros in Piccadilly. The jet age -- The Gold Standard -- From Stone to Bronze, From Bronze to Iron -- The Poisonous Metals -- Arsenic, Mercury, Lead -- Getting More Reactive -- Zinc, Magnesium, Sodium -- Special Tricks -- Why all These Differences? -- What Next? -- To Sum Up -- 10. In Praise of Uncertainty Unavoidable, and a good thing too -- The Need for Uncertainty -- The Philosopher's Paradox -- Not Proven -- Ignorance as a Predictive Tool -- A Quantum of Uncertainty -- Sheer Chaos -- It Doesn't Compute -- In Conclusion -- 11. Everything is Fuzzy And the smaller, the fuzzier. Waves are particles. Particles are waves. Crisis in the atom -- Light is Waves -- Light is Particles -- The Crisis in the Atom -- Indeterminacy -- Particles are Waves, But No One Understands How This is Possible -- What Happened to Everyone -- To Sum Up.

12. Why Things Have Shapes Lewis's magic cubes. Stealing, sharing, double counting. The power of repulsion -- Wasted lives -- Chemistry by the Numbers -- Particles in Motion -- The Rule of Eight -- Two for the Price of One -- But How is this Possible? -- More about Lewis -- Shape -- To Sum Up -- 13. Why Grass is Green or Why Our Blood is Red An old question answered. From sunlight to sugar. A brief history of colour vision. Blood and iron -- The Nature of Colour -- Sunlight to Sugar -- Putting it all Together -- The Bird's Eye View is Different -- And Now for Donne's Other Mystery, Why Blood is Red -- To Sum Up -- 14. Why Water is Weird Fragile bonds. Floating ice and foreign policy. Molecular recognition and the molecules of life -- Going Liquid -- The Hydrogen Bond -- Why Ice Floats, and Why it Matters -- Other Weird Liquids -- Wet and Wonderful -- Fact, Fraud, and Fiction -- What Makes Life Possible -- To Sum Up -- 15. The Sun, The Earth, The Greenhouse Yellow-hot sun, infrared-warm Earth. When it comes to carbon dioxide, more is more. Disinformation and denialism -- All Things Glow -- The Sun -- The Earth -- The Greenhouse -- Fire, Flood, and Famine? -- But What About...? -- Uncertainty and its Implications -- To Sum Up -- 16. In The Beginning From Big Bang to small planet. The birth and death of stars. Size matters. The making of the elements. Vital dust -- In the Beginning ... -- An Inconstant Universe -- The Big Bang, and its Aftermath -- A Star is Born, and Lives, and Dies -- The Death of Stars, the Birth of Elements -- Ends and Beginnings -- Endnotes -- Glossary -- Index.