Atomic Universe: the Quest to Discover Radioactivity

ATOMIC UNIVERSE: THE QUEST TO DISCOVER RADIOACTIVITY
By Kate Boehm Jerome
National Geographic Society, 2006; Juvenile nonfiction; 57pgs.

Atomic Universe is filled with good information about the discovery of the structure of the atom and of radioactivity. Jerome's style is ideally suited to a middle-grade reader; she presents her material in a conversational style with just the right amount of detail to keep things interesting. Unfortunately, the book presupposes its young readers already know what radioactivity is and she never links Mendeleyev's discovery of atomic weights and measures with the discovery of X-rays, polonium, and radium, nor does she ever explain that those"mysterious rays" are actually particles and why they are sometimes deadly and sometimes good. This could have been a crackerjack of a book, but instead, it is fatally flawed.

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