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
The Martian Chronicles: New Discoveries on the Red Planet, by Burkhard Bilger
// Thursday, May 16, 2013 • Hal Harris
One could argue that the technological triumphs embodied in our robotic explorations of Mars far exceed those that put men on the moon.  Missing, however, is the drama of putting human life at risk, and the ease with which our imagination can put us in the shoes of the explorer. That is not to say that there is not a human element.
Climate Change Denial in the Classroom
// Saturday, May 4, 2013 • Hal Harris
Universities should be and are expected to be sources of truthful and unbiased information about controversial subjects, especially in the sciences.  Unfortunately, that is not always the case.
Life's Ratchet: How Molecular Machines Extract Order From Chaos
// Tuesday, April 30, 2013 • Hal Harris
Peter Hoffman is a physicist and materials scientist, and he brings those perspectives and sensibilities to the description of how life converts chemical energy into order and motion.  The "Ratchet" in the title is Feynman's Ratchet, a gedanken experiment described in Feynman's "Lectures on Physics" and reminiscent of Maxwell's Demon.
Gas Laws HD Lite
// Tuesday, April 16, 2013 • Doug Ragan
Gas Laws HD Lite is a free iOS app that I have found to be very convenient for allowing students to discover the relationship of Boyle’s Law and Charles Law. It is developed by Tj Fletcher and can be used on the iPad.
iGasLaw
// Friday, April 12, 2013 • Doug Ragan
iGasLaw by Cognitive Efficiency, Inc. gives students the capability on the iPad to adjust or hold constant variables such as volume, temperature, and pressure and then see what that effect has on the other variables.
The Half-Life of Facts: Why Everything We Know has an Expiration Date
// Monday, January 28, 2013 • Hal Harris
When I think of a 'half-life' I have in mind a particular physical model, the one that we use when discussing first-order chemical reactions as exemplified, for example, in unimolecular thermal decompositions at moderate pressure or any nuclear fission.
Public Defender: Diane Ravitch Takes on a Movement
// Tuesday, November 20, 2012 • Hal Harris
Diane Ravitch was one of the architects and leading exponents of No Child Left Behind, but she has reversed field completely, and has become one of only a few very prominent critics of its Obama-Duncan incarnation, Race to the Top.
The Signal and the Noise
// Monday, November 5, 2012 • Hal Harris
I want to admit to my addiction.  I have become a rabid fan of Nate Silver's FiveThirtyEight (http://http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/) blog on the presidential and senatorial polls that culminate in the November 6 election.
The Case of the Poisonous Socks: Tales From Chemistry
// Friday, October 19, 2012 • Hal Harris
I picked up this book at the ACS National Meeting in Philadelphia in August, expecting that it would be a compilation of interesting chemistry anecdotes, organized around the chemistry involved.
Higher Ed Disruption: Not So New
// Tuesday, October 9, 2012 • Jon Holmes
I am certainly wedded to the idea that technology applied correctly can have a signfiicant impact on student learning. In an essay on evolving ideas about technology and education, Alexandra W. Logue reminds us that the ideas behind some current trends on using technology to 'flip' the classroom are anything but new.