Home Chemistry in Chemical & Engineering News!

As promised, Chemical & Engineering News has an article mentioning our hand warmer experiment. Check it out!

What's That Stuff? The Chemistry of Everyday Products

I was just interviewed for the What's That Stuff column of Chemistry & Engineering News, the weekly magazine of the American Chemical Society. Apparently, this blog is the first thing that comes up when you Google "chemistry" and "hand warmers." How cool is that! Looks like they have some interesting articles too. Can't wait to see it!

Home Chemistry Experiment Links

I've started a new category in my sidebar for links to chemistry experiments you can easily do at home. They include some activities from NiseNet, the Nanoscale Informal Science Education website. While these are designed for museums and schools, many of them are easy to do at home too. I've already printed out the paper model Bucky ball to try later!

The Oxford Book of Modern Science Writing

According to my fellow GeekDad contributor Jenny Williams, The Oxford Book of Modern Science Writing --Richard Dawkins' collection of essays by science writers famous and obscure on everything from astronomy to biology, genetics, evolution, chemistry and relativity-- is "400 pages of science-y goodness."

Read her review here.

ChemMatters podcast - Nanostructures

From the ByteSize Science blog of the American Chemical Society:

The award-winning high school chemistry magazine ChemMatters is making its YouTube debut with its first ever video podcast. The first episode highlights the very big promise of those very small machines known as nanotechnology. The episode explains how incredibly small nanostructures like buckyballs could lead to tiny devices that bring medicine exactly where it needs to go in your body, as well as powerful computers the size of a grain of sand or vital new sources of energy.

Theo Gray's new book, The Elements

Here's what I said about it on GeekDad's first holiday gift guide:

The Elements: A Visual Exploration of Every Known Atom in the Universe
Even if this book weren’t absolutely gorgeous, it would still be a worthwhile investment because of how well it works as Coffee Table Education. This is when you leave a book lying around that is so tempting the kids pick it up and start learning stuff without even being asked! Based on author Theodore Gray’s amazing website, The Elements offers a double-page spread (or sometimes more than one) on each element, complete with lush photos of the raw material in its pure form, as well as in various incarnations, both common and rare. Delightful. Buy it on Amazon.

New Blog - Home Physics!

It'll be a few more weeks before it really gets up and going, but I'm starting to add helpful links and info about learning physics at home to this year's science blog, Home Physics. Come visit! And feel free to comment with your favorite resources or suggestions.