Hal Harris

Did ancient Parthians know how to make electricity with batteries? An object discovered in 1936, during excavation of Khuyut Rabbou'a, near modern Baghdad, has raised speculation that they might indeed have.

When I teach the quantum chemistry part of our physical chemistry sequence, I usually carve out one or two lectures to talk with my students about some of the wonderfully puzzling aspects of quantum measurements.

In the social sciences, 1995 may turn out to be (the figures aren't available yet) the year in which as many women earned Ph.D. degrees as men did. But in the physical sciences, the ratio is still about four to one.

I've always thought that optical transforms were a great model for the determination of crystal structures using X-ray diffraction, and I've used the ICE (Institute for Chemical Education) kit for this exercise many times.

John Allen Paulos is author of another book that you may have read or heard about, "Innumeracy", in which he describes the decline in the ability of Americans to perform simple mathematics, even arithmetic. In "A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper", he provides some of the reasons why mathematics is important to everyday life.