107 Stories About Chemistry
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The scientists of our days write that the abundance of the chemical elements in the Earth's crust decreases regularly from the light elements to the medium-weight ones and then to the heavy ones. This isn't always the case. For example, there is much more heavy lead on Earth than many of the light representatives of the Mendeleyev Table. Why so? Why not equal amounts of all? Has not nature been unjust in "accumulating" some of the elements and not attending to the supplies of others? No, there are laws according to which there is bound to be a great deal of some of the elements and little of the others. To be quite honest about it, we do not know these laws as yet, and content ourselves with assumptions. You see, the chemical elements have not always existed. The universe is so constituted that there is always a gigantic process of formation or synthesis of elements going on in various parts of it, a process so great that there is nothing it can be compared to. The cosmic nuclear reactors, the cosmic accelerators, are the stars. Chemical elements are always being "cooked" in the depths of some of them. Unheard of temperatures, unimaginable pressures reign there. The basic laws are those of nuclear chemistry, the rules - nuclear chemical reactions transforming one element into another , the light elements into heavy ones. And such are these laws that some elements form more easily and in greater quantities while others form with greater difficulty and therefore in smaller proportions.
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