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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by Hal Harris
Sun, 06/01/1997 - 01:00

I like almost everything about this book, except the title. I don't believe that teachers of science should be "explaining" science in their classrooms and, fortunately, the authors of "Explaining Science" don't, either.

Recent activity: 10 months 2 weeks ago
by Hal Harris
Fri, 05/02/1997 - 02:00

The rematch between world chess champion Garry Kasparov and IBM's "Deep Blue" (and a team of programmers) provides the focus for a discussion of the meaning of intelligence, humanity, and consciousness.

Recent activity: 11 months 2 days ago
by Hal Harris
Thu, 05/01/1997 - 01:00

Bernd Heinrich is one of my favorite writers about nature, and especially insects. I discovered his "Bumblebee Economics" (Harvard University Press paperback) a number of years ago, and used it in a course for non-science majors that I taught in our Honors College.

Recent activity: 10 months 2 weeks ago
by Hal Harris
Wed, 04/02/1997 - 01:00

The "river" to which Dawkins refers in the title of this little (172 page) book is the river of digital genetic information that connects us to our human ancestors and to the rest of life on our planet. I find this metaphor to be an extremely provocative one, and I suspect that it would appeal to many of our computer-addicted students.

Recent activity: 10 months 2 weeks ago
by Hal Harris
Tue, 04/01/1997 - 00:00

If you have students looking for an interesting science project, the May Scientific American has a nice one. A sun photometer can be used to determine the amount of haze in the atmosphere, and this article describes one that can be built in a couple of hours for less than $20 (although you also need to have a voltmeter).

Recent activity: 11 months 2 days ago
by Hal Harris
Sat, 03/01/1997 - 00:00

The Bulletin for the History of Chemistry is the official publication of the American Chemical Society's Division for the History of Chemistry. The most recent issue is dedicated to the contributions of C. K. Ingold, one of the founders of physical organic chemistry. It records the proceedings of a symposium at the ACS meeting in Chicago in 1993.

Recent activity: 11 months 2 days ago
by Hal Harris
Sun, 02/02/1997 - 01:00

The very first of "Hal's Picks", back in 1995, was the announcement of the first experimental observation of a Bose-Einstein condensate. This can be considered as a new phase of matter, in which atoms in a cold cluster lose their separate identities, because their deBroglie wavelengths exceed the dimension of the group in which they find themselves.

Recent activity: 11 months 2 days ago
by Hal Harris
Sat, 02/01/1997 - 00:00

The origin of the molecular "handedness" that pervades earth's biology has been an evolutionary puzzle. Given that right and left-handed amino acids have equal energies, why do only the left-handed ones participate in biosynthesis? One hypothesis is that life started from templates that arose from extraterrestrial sources, such as meteors.

Recent activity: 11 months 2 days ago
by Hal Harris
Wed, 01/01/1997 - 00:00

Science lost one of its most eloquent and persuasive spokesmen with the death last month of Carl Sagan. While he was best known as an astronomer and planetary scientist, The Demon-Haunted World should remind us that his interests were far broader than that. Here, he addresses at greater length some questions of pseudoscience that he briefly discussed in Sunday Parade magazine articles.

Recent activity: 10 months 2 weeks ago
by Hal Harris
Mon, 12/02/1996 - 01:00

The problem of acid rain has become almost a cliche in the teaching of environmental chemistry topics.

Recent activity: 11 months 2 days ago