Chemical Education Today
Summer Reading Thinking ahead to the approaching summer and its promise of free time for reading, here are some suggestions from several Book & Media Reviews editors and reviewers. Ed Walsh recommends Sir Christopher Ingold, A Major Prophet of Organic Chemistry, by Ken Leffek. Nova Lion Press: Victoria, BC, Canada, V8Y1A6; 1996. $19.50. See John D. Roberts’ review in the June issue of this Journal. Adventures of a Chemist Collector, by Alfred Bader. Weidenfeld & Nicholson: London, 1995. This book offers a great blend of moxie (there is a word to conjure), entrepreneurship, chemistry, and art. Bader traces his life from Nazi internment to organic chemistry at Harvard to the birth and maturation of the Aldrich Chemical Company, now known as Sigma-Aldrich. Bader is a significant player in both the world of chemistry and the world of art.
Designing the Molecular World, Chemistry at the Frontier, by Philip Ball. Princeton, 1994. This is the last opportunity I will have to push this, my favorite book about chemistry. This work gives us that difficult-to-achieve perspective of great scientific developments that arise from cross-fertilization of fields closely allied with chemistry. The Most Beautiful Molecule: The Discovery of the Buckyball, by Hugh Aldersey-Williams. Wiley: New York, 1995. To quote David Wade, “…describes the discovery of C60, and also the subsequent developments that led to verification of its structure and properties… . It conveys the excitement that accompanies a major scientific discov-
ery, in a style that is reminiscent of Jim Watson… , The Double Helix.”
Our Stolen Future: Are We Threatening our Fertility, Intelligence and Survival? A Scientific Detective Story, by T. Colborn, D. Dumanoski, and J. P. Myers. Dutton: New York, 1996. $24.95. This is a hard look at what we are doing to the environment and the emerging molecular consequences. There are many hormone mimics in our trash and their effect upon life, even in small amounts, may be catastrophic. Bombardier Beetles and Fever Trees, a Close-Up Look at Chemical Warfare and Signals in Animals and Plants, by William Agosta. Helix Books, Addison-Wesley: Reading, MA, 1996. Chemical Ecology, the Chemistry of Biotic Interaction; Tom Eisner and Jerry Meinwald, Eds. National Academy of Science: Washington, DC, 1995. Both of these books provide fascinating reading that promises to have you coming back again and again. Agosta’s book is a tremendous romp around the diverse areas of communication of plants and animals. How they both use chemistry to communicate and protect themselves. (See page 857 of this issue for an article by Agosta based on this book.) Eisner and Meinwald tightly edit a compilation of research that defines the area of chemical ecology, the discipline that attempts to make sense of “a vast communicative interplay [among organisms], fundamental to the fabric of life”.
About the contributors: Ed Walsh is the editor and Jeff Kovac is an associate editor of the Journal’s Book & Media Reviews feature; Jack Steehler teaches in the Department of Chemistry at Roanoke College, Salem, VA; Hal Harris edits the Journal’s Chemical Education Resource Shelf column on JCE Online.
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Chemical Education Today
From Jack Steehler Hal Harris suggests The Thermal Warriors: Strategies of Insect Survival , by Bernd Heinrich. Harvard University: Cambridge, MA, 1996. ISBN 0-674-88340-3, $27.00 (cloth). The regulation of body temperature is a matter of life and death to many insects. How do those little guys learn all that thermodynamics? River Out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life, by Richard Dawkins. Basic Books (Science Masters Series): New York, 1996. ISBN 0-465-06990-8, $10.00 (paper). Richard Dawkins, author of The Selfish Gene and The Blind Watchmaker is one of the two leading authors of books that explain Darwinism and the workings of genetics (the other is Stephen Jay Gould). This little book captures many of his most important ideas, and is a delight to read. The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark , by Carl Sagan. Random House: New York, 1996. ISBN 394-53512-X, $25.45 (cloth). The late Carl Sagan’s last book has messages of particular interest to science educators. He encourages us to
be more aggressive in confronting pseudoscientific beliefs in our students and the general public. His “Baloney Detection” chapter is a great application of the scientific method.
What If You Could Unscramble an Egg? by Robert Ehrlich. Rutgers University: New Brunswick, NJ, 1996. ISBN 0-81352254-4, $25.95. Ehrlich is a physics teacher (George Mason University), but many of the ideas he plays with in his most recent book would appeal to teachers of chemistry. He has a sense of humor, and his approach to science makes it appealing to anybody with a brain.
The Flight from Science and Reason, edited by Paul R. Gross, Norman Levitt, and Martin W. Lewis. Johns Hopkins University: Baltimore, 1996. ISBN 0-801-85676-0, $19.95 (paper). This big book is the proceedings of a conference that was sponsored by the New York Academy of Sciences. Each contribution is only a few pages and can be read in any order, so it allows short snatches of reading instead of a long-term commitment.
I have chosen books that offer a different perspective on either being a scientist or teaching science. Summer is a good time to take a fresh look at what we do and how we do it, and looking at a distinctly different point of view can help.
Chemical Education, High School Level: ChemCom (Chemistry in the Community), a project of the American Chemical Society; 2nd ed., 1992; 3rd ed. 1997; Kendall Hunt: Dubuque, IA. Chemical Education, College Level: Chemistry in Context, 2nd ed., by A. Truman Schwartz et al. Wm. C. Brown: Dubuque, IA, 1997. Being a Scientist: Richard Feynman was a Nobel Prize–winning physicist with a distinctive style. At the very least, reading about him will make you think about creativity in science; it might even inspire you! Here are three suggestions. On a light, nontechnical level— “Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!”: Adventures of a Curious Character, by Richard P. Feynman; Bantam: 1985. Two full biographies with technical material are James Gleick’s Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman; Pantheon: New York, 1992, and Jagdish Mehra’s The Beat of a Different Drum: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman; Clarendon: Oxford, 1994.
Jeff Kovac recommends The Same and Not the Same, by Roald Hoffmann. Columbia University: New York, 1995. In this erudite, reintegrative book, Roald Hoffmann displays his love and mastery of both chemistry and language. His goal is to show that chemistry is both unique and interesting not only to the practitioner of the science but to the user of its products. This is a book filled with insight and wisdom. The Scientific Revolution, by Steven Shapin. University of Chicago: Chicago, 1996. This book opens with the sentence, “There was no such thing as the Scientific Revolution, and this is a book about it.” It provides a lively introduction to contemporary scholarship concerning the origin of modern science,
showing how scientific practice evolved out of the philosophy, politics, and religion of the time.
Things That Make Us Smart, by Donald A. Norman. Addison–Wesley: Reading, MA, 1993. In this stimulating introduction to human cognition and the role of representations and tools in thinking, Norman shows how the right tool can help us solve difficult problems, but how the wrong tool makes the problem harder. His discussion of experiential and reflective learning is very important for chemical educators. The Myth of Scientific Literacy, by Morris H. Shamos. Rutgers University: New Brunswick, NJ, 1995. A thoughtful examination of the
important problem of scientific literacy that surveys the history of general education in science and proposes realistic goals for science literacy in the United States. You may not agree with this provocative book, but it will force you to rethink the issues in depth.
The Private Science of Louis Pasteur, by Gerald L. Geison. Princeton University: Princeton, NJ, 1995. This study is an example of scientific biography at its best. Geison reexamines the life and work of Pasteur as illuminated by his private papers and laboratory notebooks, which have only recently become available. We see the real Pasteur, a brilliant scientist and skillful intellectual combatant. This is an important book for those interested in history of science or scientific ethics.
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