+1 862 207 3288 Choose one of the 4 chapters which will be available on the attached file.
Please add some extra sources to help build main ideas.
and read the following questions in order to help you to write the essay.
In simple terms, what forms of chemical material(s) and/or reaction(s) feature in your chosen chapter?
How is the chemistry mentioned in your chapter woven into a story about the author’s career or life?
What role in the story is played by the chemical element named in the title of your chosen chapter?
What does your chapter tell you about the deductive or reasoning processes that chemists regularly use?
What does your chapter say about small-scale industrial chemistry (albeit more than 50 years ago)?
Do you think that Levi found it difficult to separate his chemical career from other aspects of his life?
Can you relate the events described in your chapter to other events, either at that time or subsequently?
Your essay should be a commentary on the chosen chapter, emphasising how
an industrial chemist such as Levi thinks, works and behaves as a member of
the community.
The award-winning author Primo Levi (1919 – 87) graduated as a chemist in
Turin, Italy just before a period when World War II racial laws prohibited
Jewish people such as him from gaining academic degrees. In 1943, he joined
an Italian partisan group and was eventually arrested and deported to the
Auschwitz concentration camp, where he survived on the strength of his
chemical skills. His post-War career combined industrial chemistry with a
series of award-winning books. In its final paragraph, he describes The
Periodic Table as “a micro-history, the history of a trade and its defeats,
victories, and miseries, such as everyone wants to tell when he feels close to
concluding the arc of his career …”. Elsewhere [Foreword (January 1985) in
Other People’s Trades (Michael Joseph Ltd, London, 1989; ISBN 0 7181 3331
5)],
Levi wrote:
“Sometimes I am asked with curiosity, or even arrogance, why I write though I
am a chemist. I … will make it clear that between the ‘two cultures’ there is no
incompatibility; to the contrary, there is, at times, … mutual attraction.”
The four chapters of The Periodic Table from which you are asked to select
your essay topic are as follows:
• Chap. 6, “Nickel”: Soon after graduating and as WWII closed in on
Italy, Levi was given a job by a member of the Italian army at a remote
mine ‘in some place’. There he found plenty of asbestos, a little nickel
(which he was expected to extract), as well as some underlying human
interest …
• Chap. 9, “Phosphorus”: Another of Levi’s wartime experiences as an
industrial chemist in 1942, before he was sent to Auschwitz. The story
blends anthocyanin plant pigments with extraction of phosphorus
compounds from plants for pharmaceutical purposes plus an underlying
touch of romance in the lab …
• Chap. 12, “Chromium”: This is a chemical detective story about a batch
of chromate anti-rust paint that went (expensively) wrong in 1944 for no
obvious reason, how an ingenious chemical remedy was devised by Levi
in 1946, and how that remedy survived many more years in a mystical
paint formula …
• Chap. 20, “Vanadium”: Another chemical detective story, in which a
German chemist’s habitual spelling error identifies him as Levi’s
wartime supervisor at the I.G. Farben laboratories in Auschwitz …
The following topical questions may help you to plan and write your
essay:
· In simple terms, what forms of chemical material(s) and/or reaction(s)
feature in your chosen chapter?
· How is the chemistry mentioned in your chapter woven into a story
about the author’s career or life?
· What role in the story is played by the chemical element named in the
title of your chosen chapter?
· What does your chapter tell you about the deductive or reasoning
processes that chemists regularly use?
· What does your chapter say about small-scale industrial chemistry
(albeit more than 50 years ago)?
· Do you think that Levi found it difficult to separate his chemical career
from other aspects of his life?
· Can you relate the events described in your chapter to other events,
either at that time or subsequently?
