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.

Many Picks can be purchased from Amazon. Using the Amazon links on those pages help to support ChemEd X.

pick
The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie
// Tuesday, September 1, 2009 • Hal Harris
Meet Flavia de Luce. You are going to like her. It is 1950 and Flavia, a very precocious eleven year old, lives in a small village in England in a deteriorating grand mansion with her father and two older sisters.
Life Ascending: The Ten Great Inventions of Evolution
// Saturday, August 1, 2009 • Hal Harris
When I saw this new book on the subject of evolution, I thought it would probably be one side or the other of the very tired evolution/creationism-"intelligent" design debate.
Of Beauty, Sex and Power
// Thursday, July 2, 2009 • Hal Harris
Having just returned from the Gordon Research Conference on Chemical Education Research and Practice, I can attest to the central role that statistics plays in chemical education.
Science Teaching as a Profession: Why it Isn't How it Could Be
// Wednesday, July 1, 2009 • Hal Harris
The shortage of well-trained science teachers is widely recognized, but the solution to the problem requires first an appreciation of its causes. This little book, which is available free online, addresses the tangible and intangible reasons why fewer talented people choose science teaching as a career or choose not to stay in teaching.
Plastic Fantastic: How the Biggest Fraud in Physics Shook the Scientific World
// Monday, June 1, 2009 • Hal Harris
Jan Hendrik Schön published some of the most exciting and ground-breaking physics of the past decade. He published it in the most prestigious specialty journals such as Physical Review Letters, Nature and Science. He won several important prizes and was being nominated for more of them when a problem came to light.
Brain Gain: The Underground World of 'Neuroenhancing' Drugs
// Thursday, April 2, 2009 • Hal Harris
The off-label use of neuroenhancing drugs such as Provigil (modafanil), Adderall (mixed amphetamines), or Ritalin (methylphenidate) is a fact of life and a growing practice in high schools, colleges and universities and in the business world.
The Age of Entanglement: When Quantum Physics Was Reborn
// Wednesday, April 1, 2009 • Hal Harris
While quantum mechanics has been able to answer many practical questions about the structure and bonding of atoms, molecules, nuclei, and even subatomic particles, it still does not adequately yield its own ultimate meaning.
The Symmetries of Things
// Sunday, March 1, 2009 • Hal Harris
This beautiful book could certainly enhance your coffee table, but don't buy it just for its looks. Be prepared to spend some time with it, and join the wonder that mathematicians are expressing at the brilliance of this new way of describing and inventing symmetries.
Group Theory in the Bedroom, and Other Mathematical Diversions
// Sunday, February 1, 2009 • Hal Harris
I am an enthusiastic fan of Brian Hayes' "Computing Science" column in the Sigma Xi publication, American Scientist, which is the source of most of the essays in this book. Before that, I read his articles in The Sciences, a now-defunct but beautiful little magazine once published by the New York Academy of Sciences.