Each month feature editor Hal Harris recommends readings for teachers of chemistry and related sciences. Hal maintains a file of articles, pictures, and references coordinated with the topics that come up in his curriculum. Examples from that file make up this eclectic list of items he has read recently and which he thinks might be of interest to other teachers of science, especially chemistry.

Hal's Selections in 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005, 2004, 2003, 2002, 2001, 2000, 1999, 1998, 1997, 1996, 1995

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Selection for December, 2010: "The Efficiency Dilemma: What's the best way to use less energy?" by David Owen, The New Yorker December 20 & 27, 2010 p. 78 $5.99 I have always thought that the answer to the question in the subtitle of this David Owen article was clear: make the things we do with energy using less of it. Now I am rethinkng that proposition. Owen writes about the application of "Jevons paradox" to energy consumption: the economical use of a resource results not in less consumption, but of more! This theory was published in 1865 by William Stanley Jevons in a remarkable book, "The Coal Question", and has been revisited by many modern economists, including William Nordhaus of Yale and others, who often call the effect "rebound". To the extent that it is applicable, it makes the sanguine assertion that we can conserve our way out of the energy crisis somewhat problematic. For example, making refrigeration and air conditioning more efficient has led to more rather than less energy being used for those purposes. The efficiency of residential air conditioners increased by twenty eight percent between 1993 and 2005, but the energy consumed for cooling increased by thirty seven percent during the same period. Economists are arguing about how widely the Jevons paradox is applicable, but the situation is not as straightforward as most of us naively believe.

"A Bacterium That Can Grow by Using Arsenic Instead of Phosphorus" by Felisa Wolfe-Simon et al., AAAS - ScienceNow December 2, 2010 p. 1302 This is the article that was hyped by NASA as possible justification for an expanded notion of the limits of "life as we know it", an attempt to boost their own stock in astrobiology. The authors, who were funded by NASA, took a bacterium from the alkaline and mineral-filled Mono Lake in California, and found that it could be made to grow in increasingly concentrated arsenate solutions, leading to misleading headlines about an "alien" species. In a much brighter spotlight than the authors had anticipated, the paper has also drawn a large amount of criticism, most of which can be read online. Even non-subscribers can read the abstract of the paper at http://www.sciencemag.org/content/early/2010/12/01/science.1197258.abstract. The criticism began with a thoughtful, skeptical blog post by Rosie Redfeld, a microbiologist at the University of British Columbia. Her original post and hundreds of comments can be read online at http://rrresearch.blogspot.com/2010/12/arsenic-associated-bacteria-nasas.html. One can also get a "personal" insight into this ongoing controversy from the lead author herself, at http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2010/12/arsenic-researcher-asks-for-time.html. This exchange is more public and somewhat more ascerbic than is usually found amongst colleagues, but it gives the reader a peek at how scientists (and some others) argue about controversial results.

Selection for November, 2010: "Bad Science: Quacks, Hacks, and Big Pharma Flacks" by Ben Goldacre, Faber & Faber (Macmillan) 2010 288 pp. 9780865479180, $15 I am a fan of Ben Goldacre's “Bad Science” column in The Guardian. Several hundred of his articles are available free online at http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/series/badscience. His pieces are always well-researched and well-reasoned, and he writes with flair and wit. This slightly edited collection of his essays has recently been released in paperback in the US, after having been on the market in the UK since 2008. While some of the targets of “Bad Science” are easy ones like homeopathy (which ignores the lessons of introductory chemistry), he does a public service by pointing out how simple science experiments can show any consumer that toxin-removal patches are bogus. This is just one example where he uses examples from popular culture to explain how science works, and how science-based medicine and pharmacy should work. His arguments are persuasive because he clearly explains how control experiments are essential, how randomized, double-blind clinical trials work, and the amazing power of placebos. Ben has criticized many powerful institutions but it was his remarks about Matthias Rath, a German vitamin pill entrepreneur that cost The Guardian several hundred thousand dollars for a successful libel suit defense. Rath had convinced South African barrister Anthony Brink and subsequently South African President Mbeki that AIDS is caused not by HIV, but by antiretroviral drugs such as AZT. A chapter in the new edition that did not appear in the British one is “The Doctor Will Sue You Now”, describes the circumstances of the suit, which was facilitated by Britain’s lax laws about libel. Goldacre is a valuable voice of science and reason in a society that does not effectively monitor herbal remedies, where there is rampant pseudoscience about nutrition, and far more is spent on direct-to-the consumer advertising than on drug research.

"Trick Or Treatment: The Undeniable Facts About Alternative Medicine" by Simon Singh and Edzard Ernst, W. W. Norton 2009 342 pp. 978039333785, $17.95 "Trick or Treatment" is a critical (very critical) examination of several varieties of alternative medicine. I was surprised to see Simon Singh as lead coauthor of a book about health because I know him as author of a book about math, "Fermat's Enigma", that I recommended in December of 1999. I thought it was the best science/math book of that year. His collaborator is Edzard Ernst, who has strong medical credentials and a history of writing about alternative medicine. The two discuss acupuncture (not entirely negatively, but largely so), homeopathy (without mercy), chiropractory (critically but fairly, in my opinion), herbal remedies of the alternative-medicine variety (critically and informatively). Singh was sued (as an individual, not his newspaper) for remarks about chiropractic that he wrote for his Guardian column. Singh was sued for libel by the British Chiropractic Association because of a part of the column in which he said that there was no evidence that chiropractic can cure colic, ear infections, asthma, prolonged crying, and sleeping and feeding problems in children. Singh "won" when the BCA decided not to continue their appeal after losing their first round, but it cost the author a couple of hundred thousand dollars. On the other hand, the backlash against the BCA's attempt to stifle press comment resulted in a backlash against chiropractors. Five hundred lawsuits were filed in one 24 hour period against individual chiropractors for false advertising, which resulted in the careful editing of claims on Web sites advertising chiropractic service.

Selection for October, 2010: "Mistakes Were Made (but not by me: Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts" by Carol Tavris and Elliott Aronson, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt 2008 312 pp. 9780156033909, $15 I bought "Mistakes Were Made ..." for on a long plane ride, thinking that it would be a light, entertaining read. It did turn out to be very entertaining, but it also has affected the way I think about politics, law, ethics, and the teaching of science. One of steps in the constructivist approach to education is to create cognitive dissonance in the learner, for example with a demonstration involving a discrepant event. The strategy is to force the learner to consider a correct alternative to the explanation that already existed in his/her mind. Research shows that this is very difficult to do because the mind is very resistant to ideas that contradict previous positions. Look at the classic Annenberg video Minds of Our Own for examplesfrom science education. While the possibility of changing of ones' mind in light of new evidence is essential to the scientific process, it is not easy for any of us to admit errors or to change previous positions, especially if they have been made publicly. In "Mistakes Were Made", Carol Tavris and Elliott Aronson illuminate the ways in which cognitive dissonance impacts prosecutors who refuse to consider evidence that might exonerate suspects they have decided are guilty, spouses who carry grudges, followers of doomsday predictors (after "doomsday" has passed), and many other examples, including the current polarized political environment.

Selection for September, 2010: "The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education" by Diane Ravitch, Basic Books (Perseus Books Group) 2010 283 pp. 9780465014810, $29.95 In 2002, President George W. Bush signed the bill that made No Child Left Behind (NCLB) law. It was a culmination of sorts of tides that had been growing for years, through both the Clinton and Bush administrations, toward sweeping reform in US schools. Standards would now be higher, market forces would operate to force weak schools, districts, and teachers to either meet the mark or be replaced. Every child would be learning more, and by the 2013-14 school year, one hundred percent of the children in American public schools would be proficient in reading and mathematics. We have only about three years to go, and it is absolutely clear that not just a few troubled, poor schools will fall short of that bar, but it may be difficult to find any that will surmount it. The failure isn't just that the federal resources that were supposed to lubricate the reform never materialized, but that the supposed data-driven business model for education is flawed. Diane Ravitch was involved in both the design and the implementation of NCLB, and she has the perspective of an insider. She worked hard to bring about the changes that NCLB demanded, but by about 2007, it had become clear to her that the train was off the rails. In this book, she provides the wisdom of a gifted teacher, the analytical skills of a CPA, and the writing skills of a journalist to make the compelling argument that the Obama administration's apparent willingness to try to rescue the NCLB vision by doing even more of the same is not likely to be good for our children and, ultimately, our country. I was surprised at how well this story was told. Ms. Ravitch uses both statistics and anecdotes to lead the reader to the same conclusions that can be obtained by talking with any public school teacher you know.

Selection for August, 2010: "Mirror-Image Asymmetry: An Introduction to the Origin and Consequences of Chirality" by James P. Riehl, John Wiley 2010 240 pp. 9780470387597, $49.95 The fact that Jim Riehl is a good friend and a former colleague does not mean that I can't recommend his book, does it? I would be writing about Mirror-Image Asymmetry even if I had never heard of this tennis player of limited talent. Jim has written a one-of-a-kind book for teachers and students of spectroscopy, organic chemistry and pharmaceuticals, art and architecture, natural history, and even sports. It reminds me a little of Hargittai and Hargittai's Symmetry Through the Eyes of a Chemist (which recently came out in a new edition), but Riehl focuses (pun intended) on the subtle lack of symmetry between chiral objects, rather than the exploitation of symmetry itself. For chemists, he clearly explains the (R,S) and CIP nomenclatures for chiral molecules, and there are lots of examples of how chirality is important in smell and insect pheromones, in drugs and in architecture. This is a really fun, entertaining and informative book, providing a wealth of analogies between molecular properties and the macroscopic world. It will be valuable to organic, physical, and biochemists, but even non-scientists can skip all those molecular structures and still enjoy the book.

Selection for July, 2010: "The Disappearing Spoon: And Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World from The Periodic Table of the Elements" by Sam Kean, Little, Brown & Co. (Hachette Book Group) 2010 391 pp. 9780316051644, $24.99 (e-book $11.99) Sam Kean is not a chemist, and he seems to have had little help from a chemistry-literate editor in writing this collection of stories about most of the elements of the periodic table. To a certain extent, his chatty and colloquial style helps to bring chemistry to an audience that is science-phobic (the c-word does not appear in the title or subtitle, presumably for this reason). On the other hand, he has thrown together a bunch of anecdotes without much regard for their credibility and many of the analogies he uses to explain science are mis-aimed. For example, when describing how atomic clocks work, Kean says that cesium atoms play the role of the mainspring of a clock or watch. In fact, they are analogous to the balance wheel or the pendulum. He says that lithium batteries in a pocket full of change can short out, causing a dangerous amount of heat. This is said to be a result of the reactivity of lithium. Well, that is sort of true. But a mercury battery can be shorted the same way, with the same result, despite the fact that mercury is not known for its reactivity. Describing Pasteur's work on the chirality of tartaric acid, he claims that a beam of light from a vertical slit shone into a solution of one of the isomers will deviate away from its original orientation. Intrepid experimentalists who try this will be disappointed, and those who merely read about it will have swallowed a serious misconception. It was frustrating to me that he republished the story of the Radioactive Boy Scout (Hal's Pick of October, 1998), dressing it in scientific respectibility. Kean's organization of the book is idiosyncratic, to say the least ("Elements of War", "How Elements Deceive", and equally uninformative chapter titles), and his descriptions of elemental properties are very often confused with those of their compounds. Kean also does not understand the difference between monochromaticity and coherence as laser properties. Despite its many, many shortcomings, chemistry teachers may find "The Disappearing Spoon" to be a useful collection of anecdotes, but caveat emptor.

Selection for June, 2010: "The Poisoner's Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York" by Deborah Blum, Penguin Press 2010 319 pp. 9781594202438, $25.95 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. During Prohibition, the government used a variety of compounds to "denature" ethanol. A lot of nasty stuff was tried, including gasoline, benzene, cadmium, iodine, mercury salts, ether, chloroform, carbolic acid, and acetone, but the one that killed or blinded the most illegal drinkers was methanol, which is metabolized to formaldehyde and formic acid. The optic nerve is particularly susceptible to attack by formic acid, which is why victims who did not die often became blind. The death toll from denatured industrial methanol during Prohibition is estimated to be more than 10,000. Not every government official was happy with the policy, and the heroes of the book are Dr. Charles Norris, chief of laboratories at New York's Bellevue Hospital and toxicologist Alexander Gettner, who not only campaigned against the denature of industrial alcohol, but also laid the groundwork for forensic chemistry in the US. While the Prohibition story is the centerpiece of "The Poisoner's Handbook", there are chapters describing many of the other favorite chemical compounds of the poisoner, and their detection by forensic chemists. Blum is not a chemist, and there are places where she could have used a chemistry-literate editor, but the writing is otherwise good and the story is compelling.

Selection for May, 2010: "On Fact and Fraud: Cautionary Tales from the Front Lines of Science" by David Goodstein, Princeton University Press 2010 168 pp. 9780691139661, $22.95 David Goodstein has enjoyed a long and productive career at the California Institute of Technology as a professor of physics and as Vice Provost. He brings to this small book on scientific ethics the perspective of an administrator of scientific research, a viewpoint that I have not seen expressed in any other place. The author approaches the subject largely through seven case studies, with an introductory and a conclusive chapter. Most of them have a Caltech connection, but not always. For example, the Schön case (the subject of my June, 2009 selection, "Plastic Fantastic" was a Bell Labs scandal. Most of the cases are relatively recent ones, but the one that most interested me was Goodstein's defense of Robert Milliken's work on the charge of the electron. He had been accused in a 1982 book "Betrayers of the Truth" by William Broad and Nicholas Wade, and a subsequent influential pamphlet published by Sigma Xi, of distorting his results by omitting some measurements and later lying about it. Goldstein reproduces some of the key pages from Milliken's original laboratory notebook, and he does an excellent job of explaining the experiments. For my taste, Goodstein is too easy on the "cold fusion" crowd, and especially those who are still trying to resuscitate what seems to me to be a deceased equine. Goodstein's main goal is to revive a discussion of what constitutes fraud or misrepresentation in science. While he might somewhat overstate the general applicability of his own criteria, this book is worth reading.

Selection for April, 2010: "Boyle: Between God and Science" by Michael Hunter, Yale University Press 2009 366 pp. 9780300123814, $55 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. Both Boyle and his contemporary, Isaac Newton, had strong spiritual inclinations, including both Christianity and alchemy. Newton was more willing to work through mathematics in search of eternal truths. For Boyle, his Christian faith permeates almost all of his writing (except for most of The Skeptical Chemist) and led to his endowment of an Oxford lectureship to preserve and defend the faith against the onslaught of "notorious infidels" such as "Jews and Mohametans", and funding for the translation of the New Testament into Irish and Algonquin. Michael Hunter is the world's expert on Boyle, and he has distilled seemingly every available historical artifact into this impressive book. Reading it makes you feel as if you have met Boyle himself.

Selection for March, 2010: "Building a Better Teacher: Can Educators Be Educated About How to Educate?" by Elizabeth Green, New York Times Magazine March 7, 2010 p. 30 Could it be possible that much of the education "reform" that everybody seems to be seeking might be accomplished through teaching teachers how to use a toolbox of effective classroom management techniques? That is the thesis of Doug Lemov, proprietor of a fleet of charter schools called "Uncommon Schools" and author of a book to be published by Jossey-Bass next month, "Teach Like a Champion". He claims that a deep understanding of how students learn is also essential, and has partnered with the Learning Mathematics for Teaching Project at the University of Michigan. I recommend looking at the released items from their Mathematics Knowledge for Teaching assessment. Much of what I see at the Uncommon Schools site is reminiscent of the well-worn Harry Wong (see his The First Days of School approach, which also has proved successfull with teachers I know who have used it.

"Lithium Dreams: Can Bolivia Become the Saudi Arabia of the Electric Car Era?" by Lawrence Wright, The New Yorker magazine March 22, 2010 p. 48 $5.99 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. If automobiles are going to be powered by electricity, virtually everyone expects that lithium-based batteries will play a big role. The Nissan Leaf, which is supposed to reach US markets later this year will be followed by GM's Volt, and both are going to store energy in lithium ion batteries whose chemistry is the same as those used in laptop computers. Making millions of electric cars, each with about 4 kg of lithium in its battery, will require lots and lots of the metal, and no country has more of it than Bolivia. This is a potential bonanza for one of the world's poor countries, but the problem is that Bolivia is so poor that it virtually devoid of the infrastructure necessary to exploit its potential wealth (pun intended). Its government is rightly determined to maintain control of their asset, most of which is in the bed of an almost-dry lake, Salara de Uyuni. The chemistry of lithium is likely to be much more straightforward than the politics and economics of lithium. Lawrence Wright describes the non-chemical aspects in depth. It is a very interesting story, whose earliest chapters are just beginning to be written.

Selection for February, 2010: "No Small Matter: Science on the Nanoscale" by Felice C. Frankel and George M. Whitesides, 2010 181 pp. 9780674035669, $35 Chemistry is a beautiful subject. Beyond the intellectual satisfaction of finding out how things work, there is also aesthetic reward in an optically-active crystal viewed in polarized light, a colorful reaction, or even scientific glassware. We "see" molecules only in the mind's eye, but supramolecular chemistry and nanotechnology are beginning to fill the gap between molecules too small to view optically and the macroscopic world. Much of what is found in that realm is almost incredibly beautiful, when viewed through modern microscopes. Photographer Felice Frankel collaborated with materials scientist George Whitesides to produce this very attractive volume of photographs that would enhance anyone's coffee table. However, I was disappointed to find the subtitle to be an unfulfilled promise. There is very little science here, and also only a sprinkling of nanoscale.

Selection for January, 2010: "Am I Making Myself Clear?: A Scientist's Guide to Talking to the Public" by Cornelia Dean, Harvard University Press 2009 274 pp. 978067036352, $19.95 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. Cornelia Dean has helped to make it easier for all of us to be effective when we are given an opportunity, or when we make our own opportunity to communicate to the public. This nice little handbook (it is even the size of your hand) provides excellent specific guidance for writers and speakers, from public lectures and debates to TV or radio "sound bites", letters to the editor, or writing for the Web. This book will help you make the most of those occasions. I intend to consult it regularly.

"Don't Be Such a Scientist: Talking Substance in an Age of Style" by Randy Olson, Island Press 2009 206 pp. 9781597265638, $19.95 One of the most memorable lectures I have ever experienced was given by Nobelist Willard Libby. He spoke at University of California, Irvine in 1968 or 1969, but the essence of his talk about the atmosphere of Venus is still fresh in my mind because he told such an engaging, entertaining story. While it turned out that his conclusion (that there ought to be ice caps on Venus nearly five miles thick) was completely erroneous, the weaving of the evidence through narrative is what made his argument stick with me all these years. Filmmaker Randy Olson's perspective on science for the public is also that of a storyteller, and he has a lot to teach us about how science should be presented. He advises us to meet our audience on their own turf and with persuasion rather than argument from authority. If you want to see an example of his work on creationism and "intelligent" design, seek out a copy of his documentary video, "Flock of Dodos" on DVD. It is one of the fairest treatments I have seen. I haven't yet viewed his film on climate change, "Sizzle: A Global Warming Comedy", but I intend to do so soon.