Picks

ChemEd X contributors and staff members are continually coming across items of interest that they feel others may wish to know about. Picks include, but need not be limited to, books, magazines, journals, articles, apps—most anything that has a link to it can qualify.

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pick

Radar, Hula Hoops, and Playful Pigs: 67 Digestible commentaries on the fascinating chemistry of ordinary life

// Thursday, May 1, 2003 • Hal Harris

Joe Schwarcz is Director of McGill University's Office for Chemistry and Society. He hosts a weekly radio call-in radio show in Montreal and also writes a column about chemistry in everyday life for the Washington Post. The essays in this book are collected largely from his radio show, and they are exactly in the spirit of "Hal's Picks".

Measuring America: How an Untamed Wilderness Shaped the United States and Fulfilled the Promise of Democracy

// Tuesday, April 1, 2003 • Hal Harris

Until I read "Measuring America", I was only vaguely aware of the importance of surveying to the economic and political history of the United States.

The Measure of All Things: The Seven-Year Odyssey and Hidden Error That Transformed the World

// Saturday, March 1, 2003 • Hal Harris

In 1792, the French Academy of Sciences appointed two respected scientists to survey a north-south meridian from Dunkirk to Barcelona, for the purpose of determining the size (and shape) of the earth. Why is this important? Because it would establish an international basis for the meter, foundation of the metric system.

Acid Tongues and Tranquil Dreamers: Eight Scientific Rivalries that Changed the World

// Saturday, February 1, 2003 • Hal Harris

Many people have difficulty understanding the motivation of scientists for precedence and the recognition it brings. While there are monetary incentives for some of the protagonists in "Acid Tongues", it is more often pride and the acceptance of one's ideas that drove the rivalries of Newton vs. Leibniz, Edison vs. Tesla, Crick and Watson vs. Pauling vs.

Generation of a Bacterium with a 21 Amino Acid Genetic Code

// Wednesday, January 1, 2003 • Hal Harris

Even those of us whose whose biochemistry is a little shaky are likely to know that there are twenty amino acids that form the building blocks of proteins in life on earth. Now even that simple factoid is no longer absolutely true. A group of scientists headed by Peter G. Schultz of the Scripps Research Institute have created a new form of E.

Stuffed Animals and Pickled Heads: The Culture and Evolution of Natural History Museums

// Sunday, December 1, 2002 • Hal Harris

When I was a kid, my brother and I used to negotiate Saturday Los Angeles traffic on our bicycles in order to get to the Museum of Natural History of Los Angeles, where the great collection of dinosaur bones from the La Brea Tar pits were exhibited.

DNA as Destiny

// Friday, November 1, 2002 • Hal Harris

We all know that, with the deciphering of the human genome as well as those of other animals, and of plants, that the future will bring a new level of understanding and control of our own heredity. But what can the present level of genetic testing provide?

The Honors Class: Hilbert's Problems and Their Solvers

// Tuesday, October 1, 2002 • Hal Harris

In 1900, David Hilbert gave an address to the International Congress of Mathematicians that outlined the twenty three most important unsolved problems of mathematics, as he saw them. In "The Honors Class", Benjamin Yandell describes the problems and the very remarkable people who worked on them.

Chemical Misconceptions - Prevention, Diagnosis, and Cure (2 Volumes)

// Sunday, September 1, 2002 • Hal Harris

I usually avoid writing in this space about materials that one might use directly in the classroom, since I am trying encourage teachers to expand their scope. However, this two -volume set recently published by the Royal Society of Chemistry is enough to make me change the rules.

The Odds of That

// Thursday, August 1, 2002 • Hal Harris

When nearly a dozen scientists, all in some way associated with research on biotechnology, die within a year of the 9/11 attacks, can it be coincidence? Yes, says Lisa Belkin, author of this excellent article on one of the constants of pseudoscience, the attribution of "cause" to random events.