Homely Scientist

I’m still in Boston … coming home soon … I was at Harvard Square yesterday though, no time for the museum .  But … the Tangled Web science blog carnival picked my favourite school science experiment post I submitted for this week’s edition.
I love the theme of this one … science bloggers as the Jedi and Rebel Forces fighting the Dark Side of psuedoscience, bad science, and corporately controlled science.  Making us the bastions of truth, openness and "real" science.  Yahoo!  Love it.  And exactly what I’m after here.
I’ve been meaning to blog more about the call for more …read more

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I submitted my Mad Hatter post to the Grand Rounds Blog Carnival for this week and holey smokes they accepted it!
This week I happen to be in the hometown of this week’s Grand Rounds Blog Carnival, Boston!  Which, of course, is my hometown as well.
Given that I’m traveling I’m a wee out of the loop on the old science news.  Though I did catch on CNN that there was golf ball, and larger, sized hail in Oklahoma yesterday.
What causes hail, you might ask?  Hail is really very cool (ha, ha I know).  First think of a thunderstorm as a giant …read more

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My father graduated from Harvard Medical School many years ago and while I lived in Boston as a child I frequently went to the Harvard Museum of Natural History. I even went to a Saturday morning program there and had one birthday party there too.
While the Boston Museum of Science (the Charles Hayden Planetarium has one of the last dumb-bell style Lietz star projectors … and the world’s largest Van de Graff generator is there as well) and New England Aquarium might be more famous, the Harvard Museums will always be my personal favourites.
If you journey over to Cambridge …read more

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Found on Bloggers Blog, National Geographic is putting the call out to scientists and researchers to blog more to help the fight against junk science.
Fantastic idea! Well, mostly. One key part of blogging is writing and writing for your audience. If you’ve even read a scientific journal, and I’ve read my share for sure, you know that the language and structure is distant and complex. It’s objective, rather dry, and not what most people would call “light reading”.
So while I welcome more and more science blogs, I hope they also take the time to read …read more

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I’ve been talking a lot about teachers lately, good and bad. And in in my What’s your question post, my geology advisor Dr Robert Nelson (always called Dr. Bob) put in a comment. Well Dr Bob is one of those great teachers. He truly was a mentor for me. Gave me confidence, encouraged me, pushed me, challenged me. He expected a lot from me and when I let him down, it hurt.
Great teachers don’t often get the credit they deserve. I was just writing an e-mail back to Dr. Bob (yep even after 15 …read more

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From Living the Scientific Life:
NEW YORK — Shortly after midnight today, at JFK airport in New York City, a man was arrested while trying to board an international flight while in possession of a ruler, protractor, setsquare, slide rule, log tables, and a calculator. The 37-year-old man, whom officials declined to identify pending further investigation by the homeland security team, was revealed to be a math teacher in the New York City public school system.
At a press conference this morning, Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez said he believes the man is a member of the notorious Al-Gebra movement. He is being …read more

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Mercury amalgam fillings.  Lots of us have them.  "Silver" fillings using mercury and other metals (that’s why it’s called an amalgam) have been used for more than 100 years by dentists.  But … But we all know that mercury is a very toxic substance.  The term "mad as a hatter" comes from the use of mercury in blocking hats in the past and the exposure to mercury made hatters, well, nuts.  Mercury damages the nervous system and is a substance that shouldn’t be taken lightly.
Then there are our fillings.  They have mercury in them.  Does the mercury leak out (as …read more

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Well I know that this is going to spark some debate here.  Aaron has been chomping at the bit to take me on about Global Warming, so let’s get the party started.  I’m going to start off with a chart.

This comes from the U.K.’s Climate Research Unit (CRU).  This is the latest global average temperature data.  A lot has been made of the tremendous peak in 1998 and then the noticeable drop in average temperature.  Also worth noting is the increase towards the 1940’s then leveling off, then the increase kicking like gangbusters in the 1980’s.
So I caught a little …read more

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Ah the school science experiments. Some great, some silly, some just icky. So, which one was your favourite?
I only had to dissect one frog, no worms, and didn’t blow anything up (that wasn’t supposed to blow up). Okay I burned myself in grade 7 pretty well (never grab a porcelain crucible with bare hands just after being over a Bunsen burner), but generally science was a fun time for me. But what do I remember most? Rolling steel balls down ramps in Grade 6.
Yep. It was so fun. Bunch of steel balls, plastic …read more

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The next question I’m going to answer is about the composition of the Earth and the fundamental force we all know an love … gravity.
So the question comes from Deb, a fellow b5 blogger at the Tangled Thread:

My son’s class is studying about various forces right now. His question at dinner last night was a two-parter: As you get closer to the center of the Earth, does it get hotter? and Does gravity pull harder the further underground you go?

First part … does it get hotter as you get closer to the centre of the Earth?  You bet!  The Earth’s …read more

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