Molecules is the middle in a three book series about chemistry. It shares the same graphic style and tone as its predecessor, Elements, and according to Gray it was a lot harder to organize. In Elements, the table of contents mirrored the periodic table. But there was no methodical, objective way to cover the millions of molecules that exist in nature, so eventually he gave up and decided to write about whatever he found interesting.
That is how he ended up with a book that gives the same weight to explaining how molecules create color as it does to exploring the similarities of pepper and poison, and looks as just as deeply into artificial sweeteners as it does into opioid drugs. Speaking of drugs, Molecules rarely shies away from taboo topics, even though it’s targeted for classrooms. “I want to be able to talk about the chemistry of these interesting compounds without getting hung up on the controversies,” he said. Still, his publisher wasn’t comfortable with everything, and he had to make some compromises. “We had this absolutely gorgeous marijuana bud taking up a whole page, but we ended up taking it out.”
Of note is the book’s fuzzy, blue take on the classic stick-and-ball molecular model. These models, Gray says, do not represent the reality of molecules, but are merely convenient schematics. The blueish fuzz serves to remind readers that each molecule’s nuclei are vanishingly small, and if you could actually see them they would be blurred by a haze of unpredictable electrons.
Gray has a bachelor’s degree in chemistry, but got sidetracked from pursuing his PhD in the 1980s by an offer to co-found the computational software company Wolfram Research (You might be familiar with their knowledge engine, Wolfram Alpha). Between building that company and his career as an author, he won an Ig Nobel Prize for his hand made Periodic Table (really, it’s a wooden table), and for several years wrote a column for Popular Science.
Read more at Wired Science
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