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, 2011: "A More Perfect Heaven: How Copernicus Revolutionized the Cosmos" by Dava Sobel, Walker & Co. 2011 273 pp. 9780802717931, $25 I enjoyed so much Dava Sobel's previous books, "Longitude" and "Galileo's Daughter" (both of which were Hal's Picks), that I was eager to read her latest, which was judged "best science book" for Fall, 2011 by Publisher's Weekly. I have read a lot about Copernicus lately, including both Owen Gingerich's "The Book Nobody Read" and his article about Kepler and Brahe in the September, 2011 Physics Today. Despite knowing something about Copernicus' science, the man himself was a cipher to me - one that Sobel has turned into flesh and blood. It is not easy to research the private life of an individual who lived five hundred years ago, even if that person became famous. Sobel's task was facilitated considerably by the fact that Nicolaus Copernicus was not only a scientist but also a canon in the Catholic Church, and so records related to his ecclesiastical duties supplement a scanty scientific history. Sobel has a theory - that Copernicus postponed publication of De revolutionibus orbium coelestium until near the end of his life because he feared that it would further the cause of the Lutherans. She invents a dialogue between the aging Copernicus and Georg Joachim Rheticus, a young Lutheran mathematician who encouraged and aided the older man in publishing possibly the most important scientific treatise in the history of the world. The invented dialogue is boldly inserted as two-act play, around which the factual history of Copernicus becomes the bread of this sandwich. The fact/fiction separation is manifestly clear and the intellectual and religious controversies are beautifully elaborated.

Selection for November, 2011: "The Joy of Teaching and Writing Conceptual Physics" by Paul G. Hewitt, AAPT 2011 p.412 Paul Hewitt may be the best-known physics teacher in the US. Not only has he written outstanding books for the teaching of physics and physical science, he is also the author of the very popular monthly "Figuring Physics" column of The Physics Teacher. I personally love the challenge of the monthly puzzles and Hewitt's feature is the first thing I read in every issue and freely admit that I don't always get them right. It used to be that the solutions were found later in the same issue, but recently they have begun to appear online at the TPT website (tpt.aapt.org). In the October issue, Professor Hewitt describes his trajectory as a teacher on the fortieth anniversary of his classic bookConceptual Physics, now in its eleventh edition. As with other great teachers, he makes it look and sound easy. Best of all, his methods of developing instructional materials to teach concepts, based on the written responses of students in his classes. I am delighted that the AAPT has made this article freely available to non-subscribers, as most teachers of chemistry are likely to be. Be sure to click on the hyperlink above and spend a few minutes being inspired by one of the best teachers of our time.

Selection for October, 2011: "Worm: The First Digital World War" by Mark Bowden, Atlantic Monthly Press 2011 288 pp. 9780802119834, $25 Mark Bowden, author of “Black Hawk Down”, knows how to write a nonfiction thriller. The “Worm” sounds like it ought to be science fiction, but the title refers to the Conficker worm, the most diabolical and potentially damaging computer malware ever devised. Conficker multiplies itself through internet connections, burrows into the operating system of Windows computers, and waits for instructions from its controller to do … what? It is no exaggeration to claim that the entire worldwide internet was at risk from Conficker (actually, it still is) and its existing botnet of between six and twenty five million infected hosts still poses a threat to any site in its crosshairs. "Worm" is the inside story of how a loose confederation of computer security experts barely managed to avert disaster by defending the net. Chances are that you have never heard of any of the people involved (there are too many to list here), and it is also likely that you were oblivious as the first world digital war raged. It is a story deserving of a wide audience and this skilled storyteller.

"Hacked!" by James Fallows, Atlantic Monthly November, 2011 p. 100 $$39.95/yr Computer security became a personal issue for Atlantic Monthly national correspondent James Fallows when his wife Deb's g-mail account was hacked. Bogus e-mails appealing for emergency money were sent to everyone on her contacts list, six years of mail, photographs, and records were deleted, and Mrs. Fallows was locked out of her own account. Exactly the same hack was perpetrated on one of my former students, and I recognized the format: “I was mugged in Madrid ….”. Had that been her only harm,it would have been bad enough. But she had made the common error of using the same password for several different services, including bank and brokerage accounts. It is not certain how she was hacked, but it is most likely that her information was compromised in the well-known Gawker hack of 2010, in which more than a million e-mail addresses and passwords were stolen. In other words, Mrs. Fallows was no more culpable than most of us. Her husband helpfully describes the steps he used to recover most of her files and provides some excellent advice about how to minimize the damage when this happens to you.

Selection for September, 2011: "The Great Martian Catastrophe and How Kepler Fixed It" by Owen Gingerich, American Institute of Physics September, 2011 p. 50 Owen Gingerich is the author of one of my favorite books, "The Book Nobody Read", which was my Pick for October 2004 (could it have been that long ago?), which combines astronomy, history research, and bibliophilia. In the current (September, 2011) Physics Today, he clearly but briefly describes the scientific questions that were answered by the observations of Tycho Brahe and the calculations of Johannes Kepler. Brahe's observations were made without telescopes, of course (in 1593, there were no telescopes); his measurements were instead done with a large, high-precision sextant-like instrument called an "equatorial armillary" that he designed and built himself. Kepler was an out-of-work Lutheran high school teacher whose job was a casualty of the Catholic counter-reformation. These guys were able to determine the distance between the Earth and Mars by using geometry and the parallax effect. This article was especially meaningful to me because I was able to visit Brahe's underground observation on the island of Hven during a science history tour in 2007.

"Leveling the Field: What I learned from For-Profit Education" by Christopher R. Beha, Harper's Magazine October, 2011 p. 51 $6.99 One would expect a long-time educator like me to know more about the largest university in the United States (enrollment of 530,000) and I have wondered what the University of Phoenix is really like. I see their large office buildings with prominent signs everywhere but, since they do not offer programs in science, their activities are essentially orthogonal to what I do. Christopher Beha filled in some of the blanks with this Harper's article, which was written from the perspective of a student trying to better his life by earning a college degree. Beha describes the circumstances of his fellow students who must overcome both intellectual and significant logistical barriers to attend classes while continuing full-time work. A small fraction (between five and ten percent) of Phoenix freshmen will actually earn degrees, but they get lots of marketing "encouragement" from U of P, however. One prospective student was called by the University 180 times in one month. The US government is up to its elbows in promoting schools like Phoenix, deVry, and Kaplan because they purport to be one of the ways in which the fraction of Americans with college degrees can be increased, one of the goals of the Obama administration. Military personnel are special targets for cynical exploitation by the for-profits because, the more of them that are enrolled, the more federal money can flow from Title IV education funds, as is described in Hollister K. Petraeus' op-ed in the September 22 New York Times.

Selection for August, 2011: "The Believing Brain: From Ghosts and Gods to Politics and Conspiracies - How We Construct Beliefs and Reinforce Them as Truths" by Michael Shermer, Times Books (Henry Holt and Company) 2011 385 pp. 9780805091250, $28 None of us is Spock, the superrational StarTrek character, but many of us in the science or science education business imagine ourselves to less susceptible to unfounded beliefs than the non-scientist community. In "The Believing Brain", Michael Shermer, publisher of The Skeptic magazine, shows how belief that is not based on data or reason is an inevitable consequence of being human. In fact, the use of imagination when definitive information is unavailable likely was an important trait that evolution favored in our ancestors. His "theory of mind" is based on a separation of mental states into patternicity, the tendency to attribute meaning to both meaningful and meaningless noisy data, and agenticity, the tendency to infuse patterns with meaning. He argues that both of these characteristics arose in our species as part of natural selection for traits essential for survival in a world of predators. Through numerous examples and lively writing, Shermer builds a persuasive argument. Educators have another justification for teaching students beginning with what they know - and what they believe.

Selection for July, 2011: "A Red Herring Without Mustard" by Alan Bradley, Delacorte Press (Random House) 2011 416 pp. 9780385342322, $24.95 Flavia de Luce is still at it. The precocious eleven-year-old chemist that we first met in "The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie", my Pick for September 2009, has continued to solve the mysterious deaths that occur just about every year in her 1950's English hamlet of Bishop's Lacy. Flavia works alone, using her knowledge of chemistry and an independent line of investigation to deduce the identity of the murderers of the gypsy fortune teller Fenella Faa and the ne're-do-well Brookie Harewood well ahead of the village constable, Inspector Hewitt. Last year, Flavia solved the murder of puppeteer Rupert Porson, in "The Weed that Strings the Hangman's Bag" in the same entertaining, amusing style. These are the perfect light-reading books for your summer vacation. "The Weed" is already available in paper, and the paper edition of "A Red Herring" will be out in October - too late for summer but good for a year-end gift.

Selection for June, 2011: "Nuclear Energy: What Everyone Needs to Know" by Charles D. Ferguson, Oxford University Press 2011 240 pp. 9780199759460, $16.95 Do tsunamis affect global warming? Well, the 2004 Indian Ocean catastrophe probably indirectly decreased the amount of carbon dioxide going into the atmosphere by destroying the lives of 200,000 victims and the livelihoods of probably 250,000 more. Of course, it also negatively affected coral reefs, mangroves and other wetlands, forests, and plant diversity. However, the tsunami-induced failure of the Fukushima Daiichi plant this March may increase the emission of carbon dioxide on the other side of the world. In response to the Japanese accident (and also Chernobyl, which is much closer), Germany has decided to halt not only nuclear construction, but to phase out nuclear power altogether by 2022. If they carry through, this will increase the emission of carbon dioxide because the only practical replacement for base-load power is natural gas. Governments everywhere have to decide what to do about nuclear power and the decision needs the kind of dispassionate analysis that Federation of American Scientists President Charles Ferguson provides in this new book on the subject. Although the Japanese problem continues to evolve, "Nuclear Energy" includes a clear description of what happened there, as well as a history and analysis of the problems of safety, nuclear security, waste management, and the relationships between nuclear power and climate change. Buy a copy for your Congressman. Maybe somebody on his staff will read it for him.

Selection for May, 2011: "Creation Myth" by Malcomb Gladwell, The New Yorker May 16, 2011 p.44 $5.99 Chances are that you have a computer mouse in your hand as you read these words. That object, now ubiquitous throughout the world, originated in the mid-1970's in Xerox's PARC laboratory in Palo Alto, which was a competitor to the famous Bell Telephone Labs in New Jersey. At the time, Xerox was one a handful of companies vying to establish a brand in small computers, which was a natural for them because of the company's dominance in copying. Their small computer, called the Alto, included an pointing device that they named "the mouse", and one would think that a big, resourceful, and technologically sophisticated company like Xerox would have been capable of riding their early advantage to world dominance in personal computing. That was not to happen. Instead, a young entrepeneur who, in exchange for an opportunity to invest in his new company, was given access in 1979 to the Xerox PARC experimental laboratory turned their slow, fragile, finicky, $300 input device into the cheap and reliable object you are holding. The name of that entrepeneur was Steve Jobs. As usual, Malcomb Gladwell tells the story in his own entertaining way.

"Theo Gray's Mad Science: Experiments You Can Do At Home - But Probably Shouldn't!" by Theodore Gray, Black Dog and Leventhal Press (Workman) 2009 240 pp. 9781579128753, $19.95 My son gave me this book as a Christmas present in 2009, with the expectation that I would make it one of my Picks. The sentiment was amply appreciated, but I did not make it a Pick then because I didn't want to feel responsible for the maimings and deaths that could result from trying many of the "experiments" described. The author does have some warnings and precautions for the feckless yet fearless, but many of the procedures should not be attempted by the inexpert. None of them are real experiments, in that there are no variables to systematically vary, and no lessons to be learned. The spirit is much the same as the "Mythbusters" television series, whose stars wrote blurbs for the book. Some procedures are thankfully limited in their potential for harm by the fact that ordinary citizens can't easily obtain the requisite materials, such as potassium perchlorate, (thirty pounds of) mercury, a glassmaker's furnace, white phosphorus, 30% hydrogen peroxide, or a particle accelerator. Citizens can buy plenty of stuff that can get them into trouble, though, such as concentrated hydrochloric acid, and magnesium and aluminum powder, cylinders of compressed hydrogen and oxygen, regulators, and an H2-O2 torch. Like Gray's "The Elements" book, "Mad Science" has sumtuous photographs, making it even more seductive. A new paperback edition just came out, at about five bucks less than the cloth version that Matt gave me. Caveat emptor.

Selection for April, 2011: "Becoming a Doctor: From Student to Specialist, Doctor-Writers Share Their Experiences" by Lee Gutkind (editor), W. W. Norton 2010 228 pp. 9780393071566, $26.95 Just about all of us who teach introductory courses in chemistry have a significant fraction of our students who intend to apply to medical schools and attempt to become doctors. However, very few of my students have a good idea of what that career path looks like, beyond graduation with an undergraduate degree. Not only do they not know what medical school is like, but they also do not have a good idea about the rigors and challenges of a life in medicine. This is true to a somewhat lesser degree of our students who want to become engineers; few of them really know what engineers do. However, most of them are taking undergraduate courses in engineering subjects whereas medical school is a quantum leap into a different milieu. The goal of this very engaging little book is to describe to the general public and especially to premedical students some of what one can expect in medical school, internship, residency, and practice. The essays of nineteen physician-writers are collected here. They describe among other topics the trauma of splitting open the skull of a cadaver, a resident's escape from pressure via dance, the thoughts of a practitioner in middle age, and the experience of a young doctor who was "first in his class" - to be sued for malpractice! These are good writers who skillfully use their tools to give us all a peek into their worlds. (A paperback version of this title will be available in July 2011.)

Selection for March, 2011: "The Information: A History. A Theory. A Flood." by James Gleick, Pantheon Books (Random House) 2011 544 pp. 9780375423727, $29.95 If information about information is metadata, that's what we have here. As most of us are trying to drink from a firehose of information that clogs our eyes, ears, and every mailbox, James Glieck (author of "Chaos") helps us to step back to view the larger picture, with a longer perspective. His history starts with the surprisingly effective transmission of information over distance by African drums, and continues through the Chappe brothers' "telegraph", a method of sending coded messages by a system of flags mounted on movable beams (sort of a robotic semaphore). The scientific study of information seems to have truly blossomed with the publication in 1948 of "A Mathematical Theory of Communication" by Claude Shannon in a Bell Laboratory technical journal. A connection with statistical mechanics occurs in the identification of information as a kind of negative entropy. It is ironic that Gleick's book about information, that gave us another 544 pages of it, stopped just short of the first political revolution to be organized via social media.

Selection for February, 2011: "The Hidden Reality: Parallel Universes and the Deep Laws of the Cosmos" by Brian Greene, Alfred A. Knopf 2011 369 pp. 9780307265630, $29.95 Brian Greene has emerged as the most significant spokesperson for modern physics. It isn't just that his two previous best-selling books ("The Elegant Universe" and The "Fabric of the Cosmos") were written to be accessible to the interested non-specialist, but also to excite the imagination of laymen. He also has made himself available to the popular media; I have heard him on NPR and even seen him on "The Big Bang Theory" television series. He speaks comfortably, colloquially, and with a sense of humor about the search for the Higgs boson and the recent tentative evidence for a new particle that would destroy the Standard Model. The main subject of "The Hidden Reality" is the possibility that we are all living only only one of a myriad of possible multidimensional quantum membranes (branes). This mind-blowing proposition naturally requires a lot of explanation, and Greene is up to the job. The part that is most relevant to me and my quantum chemistry students is Chapter 8, The Many Worlds of Quantum Measurement, which I think is the heart of the book. As always, it is a pleasure to hear Brian Greene talk about science.

Selection for January, 2011: "Sleights of Mind: What the Neuroscience of Magic Reveals About Our Everyday Deceptions" by Stephen L. Macknic, Susana Martinez-Conde, and Sandra Blakeslee, Henry Holt & Co. 2010 304 pp. 9780805092813, $26 Magic shows don’t “work” on children if they are not old enough to have developed the expectation that causes have predictable effects. They accept what their senses tell them, without constructing models that that make the surprising result unexpected. On the other hand, most scientists I know find “magic” to be irresistible; they are uncomfortable until they have figured out how they have been fooled. The same curiosity that dominates their professional lives also tickles their imaginations, as hypotheses are mentally proposed and rejected. Science educators also use the "magic" of science to stimulate the interest of our students. Usually, the magic that we do is explained to our audiences, but professional magicians pride themselves on keeping the secrets behind their tricks permanently obscured. "Sleights of Mind" goes behind the scenes with many of the best professional magicians, who cooperated with the authors to bring to light how the senses can be blinded and the mind can be made to misinterpret what the senses perceive. The science behind many of the tricks is explained in this book (and that is a lot of fun in itself), but the science teacher may be able to improve demonstrations, laboratories, videos and animations with a more fundamental understanding of how the human mind processes input from our surroundings.

"Flights of Fancy" by Brian Hayes, Sigma Xi January/February, 2011 p. 11 $4.95 One cold morning last week, as I was out to pick up our newspapers, a group of perhaps 250 starlings took off from a neighbor's trees, rose as a mass, wheeled a couple of circles in the air over the trees and settled in other trees nearby. There were no predators in evidence, so iIt was not clear what made them fly or how they decided when and where to land. Lots of what we understand about this cooperative behavior has resulted from the fact that an astonishingly simple computer model does a very good job of mimicking it. The computer routine called "boids" can be run in Java within your browser (see http://www.red3d.com/cwr/boids/) . Brian Hayes' current "Computing Science" column in American Scientist updates the status of this aspect of avian behavior, including the work of Ballerini et al. (what an appropriate name for this work!), who has been analyzing the flights of bird flocks using computer analysis of 3-D photographs. Some of the original ideas seem to be holding up - that flocks are held together by local interactions - but the shapes of the assemblages is not as globular as they appear to the observer, who has a kind of 2-D view. There is a lot more to learn, and amateur scientists may be able to contribute to this field.