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The Poisoner's Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York

Hal Harris | Tue, 06/01/2010 - 01:00

The central story of the Poisoner's Handbook is a war between poisoners and chemists working to detoxify poisoned beverages. The surprising thing is that the poisoners work for the US government and the detoxifiers for criminals. The setting is the years between 1920, when the 18th amendment started prohibition, and 1933, when the 21st repealed it.

Boyle: Between God and Science

Hal Harris | Thu, 04/01/2010 - 01:00

Robert Boyle is known to most chemists solely for his Law relating the pressure and volume of a gas, but this privileged son of the Earl of Cork was not as interested in discovering an equation as he was in determining what his experiments could tell him about his own relationship to God.

Lithium Dreams: Can Bolivia Become the Saudi Arabia of the Electric Car Era?

Hal Harris | Tue, 03/02/2010 - 01:00

There was a time when it was possible to estimate the size of the total US thermonuclear arsenal by measuring the ratio of Li-6 to Li-7 in commercial sources and knowing the amount of the metal in the economy. (Li-6 had been removed to make hydrogen bombs.) Now the lightest metal is prominent in other kinds of energy schemes.

Am I Making Myself Clear?: A Scientist's Guide to Talking to the Public

Hal Harris | Fri, 01/01/2010 - 00:00

The world has never more needed public understanding of science than it does now, and those of us in science education have a special obligation in this regard. The answers to health care, climate change, conservation of the environment, and so forth are not going to be found in science alone, but if they are to be addressed rationally, science literacy will be necessary.

Mammogram Math (The Way We Live Now)

Hal Harris | Wed, 12/02/2009 - 01:00

Imagine a highly reliable cancer test. It detects 95% of a certain type of cancer, and has a "false positive" rate of only 1%. This test is used on a population in which this type of cancer occurs in 0.5%. One day your doctor tells you that you have tested positive. What is the chance that you are actually sick? Surprisingly, it is only about 32 percent!