Uncle Tungsten
http://www.oliversacks.com/books/uncle-tungsten/
Uncle Tungsten: Memories of a Chemical Boyhood (2001)Paperback, Vintage Books, ISBN 0-375-70404-3
Hardcover, Alfred A. Knopf, ISBN 0-375-40448-1
A memoir of growing up in World-War-II England as part of an extraordinary scientific family.
Uncle Tungsten
Sacks, a neurologist perhaps best known for his books Awakenings (which became a Robin Williams/Robert De Niro vehicle) and The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, invokes his childhood in wartime England and his early scientific fascination with light, matter and energy as a mystic might invoke the transformative symbolism of metals and salts. The “Uncle Tungsten” of the book’s title is Sacks’s Uncle Dave, who manufactured light bulbs with filaments of fine tungsten wire, and who first initiated Sacks into the mysteries of metals. The author of this illuminating and poignant memoir describes his four tortuous years at boarding school during the war, where he was sent to escape the bombings, and his profound inquisitiveness cultivated by living in a household steeped in learning, religion and politics (both his parents were doctors and his aunts were ardent Zionists). But as Sacks writes, the family influence extended well beyond the home, to include the groundbreaking chemists and physicists whom he describes as “honorary ancestors, people to whom, in fantasy, I had a sort of connection.” Family life exacted another transformative influence as well: his older brother Michael’s psychosis made him feel that “a magical and malignant world was closing in about him,” perhaps giving a hint of what led the author to explore the depths of psychosis in his later professional life. For Sacks, the onset of puberty coincided with his discovery of biology, his departure from his childhood love of chemistry and, at age 14, a new understanding that he would become a doctor. Many readers and patients are happy with that decision.
(Publishers Weekly Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.)
ACTIVITIES:
Chapter 1:
1. Name three metals and some of their characteristics.
2. Who was Uncle Tungsteen and how was he important to Oliver Sacks?
3. Describe at least three of Oliver Sacks' relatives.
Chapter2:
1. What was the significance of the library? Other than a storage center for books, what other functions did the library serve?
2. What made the Edwardian house such a fascinating place?
3. Why did his relatives chew charcoal bits?
entrada de Human @ 15:37
2 comentarios
2 comentarios:
Lía Segade 4ºESO
El libro trata de dos niños, Oliver y Michael que tienen que ir a un internado, ya que esta situada en la 2ª Guerra Mundial. En el internado son maltratados. Michael se distrae de todo eso en la ciencia.
Su padres son médicos . El padre es el medico de los judíos refugiados en Londres.Su madre es ginecóloga y cirujana y Oliver le ayuda a hacer autopsias a su madre, después, Oliver hara autopsias en el hospital universitario. Pero el no quiere ser otro medico mas.
Aparece el personaje del tio Tungsteno,llamado Dave. Que es propietario de una fábrica de bombillas, en las que se usa el tungsteno (volframio). Casi todos sus tíos son científicos que animas a que sea uno de ellos. Oliver, se entusiasma con todo lo relacionado con los cristales,minerales,…Oliver quiere ser químico. Consigue los productos gracias a su tío. Después de algunos incidentes, traslada a otro laboratorio. A pesar de que alguna vez se le cayó algún producto químico, nunca le paso nada.No para de leer lo experimentos, descubrimientos y biografías de los químicos importantes como Bohr, Marie-Curie, Rutherford,… tambien los distintos elementos de la tabla periódica y las teorías más importantes.
-Chapter 1
1-Gold: The main characteristics of gold are its color, weight and it’s impenetrable.
Tungsten: It has a density, refractory quality and chemical stability
Mercury: It’s liquid, it’s dense and it has a special heavy.
2-Uncle Tungsten had a light bulb factory who worked in his own factory called TungstaliteThere is one person, however, who does take the time to answer every question he has and gave him some things to do experimens on his own lab and that is his Uncle, who has been called Uncle Tungsten because he makes light bulbs with Tungsten Filaments.
3-Marcus Landau was his grandfather who began the life being a shoemaker and butcher. Then he wrote a newspaper and he started to love the science and taught into his sons.
His mother is a gynecologist and surgeon and Oliver helps her mother doing autopsies. Also she was a woman who Oliver trust.
-Chapter 2
1-The library it was a storage to books and to make family games like play ping-pong, Monopoly, to play chess or cards, etc. Also there was a coin collection where Oliver had different types of coins and an encyclopedia to know where the coins were.
2-I couldn´t find the answer. The next time I´ll answer it
3- They chew charcoal bits because they had gases when they were young so they had a black tongue
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