Science Friction with Bob Wolke —This column could be titled "A Little Science is a Dangerous Thing." Here are a few of the resulting BOMBS I've run across. Read more
May 5, 2008
Reese’s Pieces, bits from the Festival of Whimsy —If you couldn’t get a seat in the "Festival of Chemistry Entertainments" last month at the ACS national meeting in New Orleans, we are more than happy to fill you in on a few fanciful moments from the standing-room-only morning session. Read more
April 28, 2008
Science Friction with Bob Wolke —If you think you know what H2O is, think again. That insipid, humdrum liquid has been vastly improved, thanks to 21st-century chemical technology. Let me give you a few examples.Read more
April 21, 2008
Priestley Medalist Namesakes —In keeping with C&EN's April 7 issue featuring 85 years of Priestley Medal winners and, specifically, C&EN Online's vignettes of now-deceased past winners, here's a peek at the notable accomplishments of some people who just happen to be NAMESAKES of medalists. Read more
Pondering Cremation —Apologies to readers who find the next item morbid, but Newscripts wondered if CREMATION is better than burial, environmentally. Read more
April 14, 2008
Science Friction with Bob Wolke —I have a 36-oz plastic bottle of Heinz ketchup with a wide cap that is flat on top, so the bottle can be stood on end. (Heinz calls it their Top-Down bottle.) Inside this flip-open cap is a nozzle through which one can squeeze out a stream of ketchup. Read more
April 7, 2008
Clicker Technology —A number of readers have buzzed Newscripts over an item about Edinburgh University's plan to give every student a handset that allows professors to pose multiple-choice questions to up to 400 students at a time. Read more
Carbon Tax —This ought to shake at least some motorists out of their environmental lethargy. Beginning in October, London plans to impose a CARBON TAX on drivers bringing their cars into the city during peak congestion hours.Read more
Pipettes —Moving from carbon dioxide emmisions into the atmosphere to chemical measurements in liquids, liquid-handling specialist Artel says that PIPETTES perform accurately and precisely in the humid conditions of the Olympic National Park west of Seattle.Read more
March 31, 2008
Science Friction with Bob Wolke —March came in right on schedule this year, hard on the heels of Feb. 29, wearing its traditional leonine garb. But somewhere around the Ides of March, one has a right to expect the lion's mane to start turning into lamb's wool. Not this year. That's when the ice storm hit, and my front walkway turned into a curling rink. I had to get rid of that ice fast, lest my letter carrier perform a "slip 'n' fall" (that's lawyer lingo) and Attorney General Mukasey show up to sue me on behalf of the U.S. government. Read more
March 24, 2008
The Solution Becomes The Problem —Around 1930, when chemist Thomas Midgely Jr. of General Motors was on the road selling the merits of Freon, the chlorofluorocarbon refrigerant he recently had invented, he would draw vapors of the stuff into his lungs in front of audiences and immediately after, with an exhalation, blow out a candle. Read more
March 17, 2008
Science Friction with Bob Wolke —Will all those who are wearing wristwatches please raise their left hands. (Southpaws, raise your right hands.) Now, will all those who think of their wristwatches primarily as jewelry or status symbols please lower their hands and leave the room. May I assume that those who remain think of their watches primarily as instruments for telling time? Read more
March 10, 2008
Feynman's Really Lost Lecture —Let's just say that this Newscripts writer has a privileged contact with a California Institute of Technology archivist. That's how I got hold of a ragged, hand-written, coffee-stained, and LONG-FORGOTTEN MANUSCRIPT of Richard Feynman, whose 1959 lecture titled "There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom" is frequently cited, with liturgical gravity, as the theoretical genesis of nanotechnology.Read more
March 3, 2008
Science Friction with Bob Wolke —A couple of weeks ago, my wife, Marlene Parrish, came home from a department store's President's Day sale (I wonder which president they meant?) with, among other things, a bracelet set all around with dozens of diamondlike stones that sparkled and glittered more dazzlingly than any $12.95 bracelet had any right to do. Curious, I read the tag. It said, "Made exclusively with high-quality Swarovski crystal." Read more
February 25, 2008
School Buzzers —College students often get a buzz out of the many extracurricular activities available to them. But one university has decided that a device similar to a game show buzzer can enliven those endlessly long—and dare we say boring?—SCIENCE LECTURE CLASSES.Read more
Fingerprinting Diamonds —Shine a white light on the Hope Diamond and the brilliant blue gem will dazzle you. Shine an ultraviolet (UV) light on the distinguished gem and it will glow red-orange for about five minutes.Read more
February 18, 2008
Science Friction with Bob Wolke —Shortly after leaving academe to become a full-time writer, I spotted a highway sign that said "Watch For Falling Rocks." My first inclination was to speed up to decrease my cross section (collision probability). But then I realized that the danger wasn't falling rocks, but fallen rocks–rocks that were already on the road. The sign was misleading. Read more
February 11, 2008
Troublesome Turkeys —Berkeley, Calif., is so rife with eccentric characters that peculiar behavior is rather commonplace. And then the macho turkeys showed up. Yup, it's true. A GANG OF WILD TURKEYS is challenging the area's live-and-let-live philosophy, and they're wreaking havoc at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.Read more
Sexing Chicks —How to figure out a BIRD'S SEX when the plumage doesn't seem to say it all.
Although feather fashion is often telling—boy birds tend to sport flashily colored quills—sex is hard to distinguish for most baby birds and for some exotic birds. You can't look under their wings, so to speak, because all birdie genitalia is internal. So what to do?Read more
February 4, 2008
Science Friction with Bob Wolke —I was kidding when I suggested in my Dec. 10 column that human adipose tissue might be converted into biodiesel fuel. But as it turns out, that has already been done. Shane Graber of Archbold, Ohio, tipped me off to a story about Pete Bethune, a former oil exploration engineer in New Zealand who plans to circumnavigate the globe in 65 days in a specially built, $3 million trimaran fueled entirely by biodiesel. Read more
January 28, 2008
Going postal over structural errors —Some bitter news was delivered to the U.S. Postal Service earlier this month. Namely, that a stamp commemorating sugar chemist and Nobel Laureate Gerty Cori features a chemical structure that is, well, wrong.Read more
Kids aren't clowning —As much as finding chemical inaccuracies is an act of sheer joy for C&EN staff, the glory should go to the reader.
It's not just stamp designers who have been dished some bad news of late. In the escalating debate about whether CLOWNS ARE SCARY, University of Sheffield researchers and 250 young subjects, have determined that they are—at least when they appear in hospital wards.Read more
January 21, 2008
Science Friction with Bob Wolke —You may have heard of a television personality named Oprah. (To protect her privacy, I shall not reveal her last name.) One of her periodic amusements is to tap a book with her enchanted scepter, whereupon it instantly becomes a million-plus best seller, and its author a multimillionaire. Needless to say, she has not blessed any of my books.Read more
January 14, 2008
Crimes Of Chemistry —"It was Mrs. Schuster, in the chemistry lab, with the hydrochloric acid." Not a game of Clue, regretfully, but a real-life homicide. As the saying around the C&EN office goes, chemistry is indeed everywhere. And on July 10, 2003, chemistry played a leading role in the murder of Timothy Schuster, 45Read more
January 7, 2008
Science Friction with Bob Wolke —I did a double (or triple) take the other day, when in short order I saw a Chevrolet Cobalt, a Dodge Neon, and a Saturn Ion. When did they start naming cars for chemical elements and entities? Would I some day see a Pontiac Praseodymium? A Volkswagen Zwitterion?Read more
