Read this book. You learn: how chemical discoveries are made with a pencil in your hands; what your chemistry textbooks are wrong about; what happens in the mysterious depths of "Black Mouth"; why Captain Scott died; how ghosts appeared in laboratories; what materials are needed to make a soft semiconductor receiver that would fold like a handkerchief; that you yourself are also almost a semiconductor; from which to build a house of three hundred floors, and many, many answers to other naive thoughtful and tricky "how," "what" and "why."