Here's a link to an article on how a similar compound works (sodium polyacrylate). This compound only absorbs 600 times its weight of distilled water, not a few thousand times.
Yes, if the bonds worked that way, that could happen.
But, metal-metal bonds (since they're actual bonds) will probably be stronger than any metal-water interactions. Water is not a good ligand. Sulfur, on the other hand, is an extremely good ligand, so since they're working with ZnS, I doubt it's anything to do with ligand interactions.
I did a little research into resveratrol last year. Here's some of what I found.
The "French Paradox" was the result of a study by Serge Renaud, a French physician, published in The Lancet in 1992. He found that although French and British citizens consume approximately the same amount of calories, the British had a much larger rate of fatal heart disease. This, despite the fact that the French smoked more, exercised less, and ate more saturated fats. The largest difference in this diet study was that the French consumed red wine.
So they decided that something in the wine gave the French an advantage. This, by the way, was televised by 60 Minutes on Nov. 17, 1991 (and an update on Nov. 5, 1995). (Yes, the TV special was on before the Renaud's article was published; studies have been going on for a while.)
Resveratrol is synthesized in plants as an anti-fungal agent, so it's found in the skin, seeds and leaves of grapes (not the fruit or juice).
To make wine, you squish the grapes, add yeasts, and let it ferment. The biggest difference between making red or white wine is that for red wine, you let the skins stay in the first fermentation. For whites, you filter out the skins after squishing them. Therefore, the red wine has more time to pull all the resveratrol out of the skins while it's fermenting.
Resveratrol itself is in a class of compounds called polyphenols. A lot of polyphenols have been found in wines, and resveratrol is not the only one that is now considered beneficial (it was the first to be characterized, so it gets the glory). At any rate, most scientists think that resveratrol acts as a radical scavenger or antioxidant in the body, which is where its benefits come from. Because of this scavenging property, resveratrol can help reduce the amount of HDL ("good" cholesterol) that turns into LDL ("bad" cholesterol). That, in turn, reduces the amount of coronary heart disease.
Don't get too many ideas about drinking a bottle a day though. A 10-year study by Gronbaek (British Medical Journal, 1995) showed that people who drank 1-2 glasses of wine a day increased longevity and decreased mortality from coronary heart disease over people who didn't drink at all. However, those who drank 4-5 glasses of wine per day still had a low mortality from CHD, but had a very high cirrhosis death rate.
A molecule is something with a molecular formula, made up of a specific number of atoms (i.e., integer numbers). It also has a particular shape and its bonds are arranged in a particular way. Change one atom or one bond and you change the molecule and its properties.
A compound (like some of the zeolites and semiconductors others have mentioned) is a mix of bonded atoms that, on average have a formula that may contain fractions or decimals. Because this is an average, the compound has no distinct start or end, and if one atom is removed the average still probably holds.
Because water is a molecule (even though its ions are common), its formula will always be H2O... to a chemist.
I'm definitely not a techie, and even I understand (most) of the definitions given at whatis.com. More helpful may be the "advanced" search, where you can turn off the hits for webpages and news articles (so you only get the encyclopedia-ish hits).
Maybe I missed it, but where would all this information be located? Availability online still limits the stuff, as many people don't have internet capabilities at home. Availability in paper form (or microfilm or whatever) would be a physically enormous amount of data. Would people in other countries also get to see everything?
Would this eventually become retroactive; that is, we get to see what our tax dollars funded in the past?
It's a huge amount of stuff. Think of all the grants from the EPA, FDA (would we get to see drug trials?), NASA, NSF, DARPA, DoE (Energy, not necessarily Education), and so on.
Don't get me wrong; I completely support it, and am kinda curious about exactly what kinds of studies my taxes have funded. It just seems like there are some large problems to be thought through.
At my alma mater (which has a pretty good music school), the library has all sorts of recordings. Okay, for the music students, much of it's classical, but a bunch of it isn't. Like checking out books, you're allowed to make copies for scholarly reasons, but not personal reasons. The honor system was, I'm very sure, broken all the time, but it's one idea.
Oh wait... nobody uses that silly physical library anymore...
It could depend on how they define "strong." From the article (thanks for the mirror!), I think they mean tensile strength; that is, they take the ends of a rod or sheet and pull them apart until it breaks. This is very different from load bearing strength (holding a weight in the middle while suspended from the sides).
Because it's so flexible, would the stuff stretch under strain? This would be bad news in, say, semi-trailer beds.
It doesn't expand in heat, but does it shrink in cold?
Is it soluble in stuff like organic solvents, crude oil, gasoline, water, acidic conditions, etc.?
What kind of wear and tear can it maintain and still be functional?
...compared to men, the number of women who play 3D video games (and have played for years) is probably significantly lower. Is this just a manifestation of years of "practice" in the 3D field?
More research should be done on backgrounds of the survey-ees...
I don't put much stake in the whole "violent video games makes you eeeevil" thing either. It's sort of another source for ideas. Just how many murder mystery books have "inspired" murders? Think "Basic Instinct."
But kids don't read these days, so there've been fewer book-burnings...
Okay, I'm only a chemist (not a biologist), but how well will increasing the white blood cell count really keep you from getting sick? After a large dose of radiation, there should *not* be a negligible effect on the person, whether the radiation is what would kill him/her or not.
Assuming there's a nuclear detonation, there will be some people who are beyond hope, but what about the next level of people, the ones with, say, big burns and high-exposure? Will giving them a super-dose of blood cells cure everything, or just prolong their lives? It sounds kind of cruel, but after something traumatic like that, it may be more humane to just let them go.
I guess my point is, at what point should we be content to resign ourselves to letting people die, to allow them a higher quality of life?
Before you say there's no hope, talk to an administrator at your school; you may be able to take placement tests or something to get out of your current situation. States are required to provide educational support for all their students through high school (public anyway; private is a different matter).
Here's a link to the Arizona Dept. of Ed.. If you're really that good in math, you may want to be tested for "giftedness." (Note: being "gifted" has to do with smarts and the way you think; you may have lots of brainpower but not be gifted.) While I don't like that term (another matter entirely), public schools must provide "gifted" education, so this may be the loophole you're looking for (see page 18 of this pdf). (Caution: my school district counted the AP classes as gifted education.) Here's a link to the "gifted student" section.
In high school, I lived near the Twin Cities (Minnesota), and was pretty good at math. UMTYMP was a good experience for me. Once you test in (you need to know a little bit of algebra and be between 4th and 8th grades to start), you start with Algebra I & II the first year. The second year is Geometry and Trig, and then you do calculus until you're through high school. There may be something like this where you live.
"Real" jobs are seldom shown correctly in movies or TV. How many lawyer/cop/hospital shows are there?
However, even though the jobs aren't shown realistically, is that necessarily wrong? Didn't watching "Voyage of the Mimi" make you want to get into oceanography? Watching "Mr. Wizard" make you want to blow things up? Seeing "101 Dalmations" make you want to get a dalmation? (okay, maybe not, but dalmation sales did increase after the movie was re-released.)
My point is, maybe TV and movies don't show a realistic view of programming/chemistry/life in general. Every job, in some way, involves banging your head against the wall and filling out paperwork for some reason or another.
I'm not advocating lying about what your job really entails, but isn't it a good thing if you can get kids interested in something?
I'm not a CS person, although I have taken a little programming.
I studied C++ the way I studied other languages (German, Italian, organic chemistry, art history): Make a conscious note to yourself at the start of your programming that "I'm now working on COBAL," and do your COBAL stuff. Then, take a half-hour break and do something completely different (dinner, drawing, skydiving). When you come back to your desk again, say, "Now, I'm working on Visual Basic," and do the next set of stuff.
To quiz yourself, translate stuff from one to the other, find which works better, see if it gives you ideas for the original (don't do this until you're done with the assignment!
This sounds really stupid and self-evident, but I found that it works.
Looking for an electron joke...
on
Science Askew
·
· Score: 3, Funny
A family of atoms is walking down the street and the little baby atom runs up to his parents and says, "Momma! Momma! I think I lost an electron!" and the Momma atom says, "Are you sure?" and the baby atom says, "Yes, I'm positive!"
A neutron walks into a bar and orders a drink. The bartender plunks the mug down in front of the neutron. The neutron asks the bartender how much he owes, but the bartender says, "For you, no charge."
I'd venture to say that the majority of MS users have to use it, either for work or because that's what came on the PC when the shiny box was opened.
Most people are used to MS products, ranging from Word to PowerPoint to other programs that are business-specific but only run on Windows platforms. Because these people don't really have a say in what they run, they just use the stuff they're used to.
Similarly, businesses which run MS products on Windows boxes aren't going to suddenly switch to, say, Linux platforms just because. That would cost a lot of money in training all the employees. Also, some programs they used to use (I know of several small business-accounting programs and chemical drawing programs) are not available for non-Windows machines.
The problem with wires is that they expand; the more heat/current passing through, the more expansion. If you're trying to propagate a wave through something that's slightly cone-shaped (rather than tubular), the wave will lose some of its integrity (it'll get larger rather than keeping its original shape). Also, if the wire gets smaller as you heat it (like using ZrW2O8 for the entire thing), the wave will be distorted (it'll get smaller and smaller).
Fiberoptics use a combination of materials: one that is essentially a traditional wire, and one that shrinks when heated. This produces an expansion in the normal stuff, and shrinks the other, creating a net expansion of zero! This way, the cable stays essentially the same size its entire length, and can propagate your signal with few distortions.
Substances that shrink when heated aren't new, and ZrW2O8 isn't new either. Here's a 1998 PDF from NIST on the stuff.
The first few pages of this nice PDF have a history of fiberoptics (the rest is an ad for the company).
Our hour-long show did not completely consist of forming gases and explosions. Those were the attention-getting experiments included in a couple of the skits.
I agree with you on some level. In most chemistry/science shows, weird and impressive things are done (flasks magically turn orange to black, a gummy bear shoots across the room with the addition of liquid, balloons explode into balls of fire), but five minutes after the show, the whole mess is forgotten as the show had zero context. This is where you say: "when will I use this in my life?"
The show with which I was involved provided a context: Ethanol is a powerful fuel additive, CO2 is produced so that bread rises, the Hindenburg burned because it contained hydrogen instead of helium. We received thank-you letters from the kids, some weeks later, and those crayon-covered papers were some of the best verifications that we had that they did remember the context (hence, the "real-life" application), and not just the explosions from our shows.
Experiments don't have to be huge, fancy-schmancy deals that take all day and have millions of data collection points. They can be more like snapshots. Try:
Go outside (or stay inside with a tarp and high ceiling). Fill an empty film cannister 1/2 to 2/3 full of water. Drop half an Alka-Seltzer tablet into the cannister, and cap it tightly. QUICKLY put it down on the ground and back up. As the tablet dissolves, it'll fizz-fizz. The quickly-expanding gas will pop the top off the cannister. The experiment shows how gases expand. Alternatively, you can take a wide-mouthed balloon and put it over the cannister mouth to catch all the generated gas.
Get slinkies and go to the staircase in the building. While in the hallway, you can have the kiddies make transverse waves and compression waves. Explain that big waves are loud noises (amplitude), and more nodes in a given length of slinky make for a higher pitched "sound." Then get a violin and/or guitar and play with pitches. Back to the hallway to make propagating waves (short, quick snaps at one end travel to the other and bounce back). This is how slinkies work on the stairs, transferring the energy. (Note: this experiement will stretch out the slinkies).
Get a simple cake recipe. Divide up the kiddies into groups. Have each group omit one ingredient. You can do the baking if the kids are too young. Find out what ingredients do in the kitchen. (You might want to try the book How to Read a French Fry (and other links in that article) to get some ideas.)
Take your fingerprint (finger on clean glass) and blow it up with the photocopier (alter some lines if you wish). Get some other fingerprints (about 20 is good). Make up a mystery (theft of magnifying glasses works). Have small groups match a found fingerprint to the suspects' fingerprints using transparancy sheets and markers (you mark only the ends of some lines). Have a discussion on whorls, loops, arches, and so on.
Do a unit on the weather. There's usually lots of it. Cloud types, weather symbols on TV, how tornados form, what a front is, etc. Have the kids make their own "TV" forecast.
It's just thinking of things to do once you have a topic. Chances are, if you ever thought, "gee, I wonder how that works," the students in your class will too. Look it up!
Yes, some things are boring and dull, but many things don't have to be that way. I agree that science shouldn't be "candy" (it's not always so sweet), but you can have fireworks (it's the metal salts in fireworks that produce the colors).
I was involved in a chemistry show during college. Instead of the normal "look, this turns green and this turns red" kind of boring (and sorta pointless show), we took nifty demos that relate to real-life, incorporated them into skits, and performed for elementary- and middle-school kids. For example:
The Muppet's Swedish Chef burbled (through a translator, of course) how bread rises using a reaction similar to vinegar + baking soda (generates CO2 gas, which expands as it's heated in the oven)
Hanz und Franz (apologies to SNL) pump up the kiddies with ethanol as an alternative fuel to dirty gasoline (use piezo poppers to ignite a drop of ethanol)
A newscast interviews eye-witnesses at the Hindenburg explosion, then demonstrates the difference between lighting a hydrogen balloon and a helium balloon with a spark
These experiements are pretty inexpensive, pretty simple, and can be impressive. It just gets the audience going. Chances are, the kiddies will remember something about hydrogen and helium exploding (or not) rather than what chemical turned the flask green.
Getting kids involved with something "real" (insert "tangible" or "active" if you like) is one of the best ways I've found to get them interested (as a student and an instructor). Here's some stuff I did while teaching at summer day camps at the Capital Children's Museum a couple of years ago:
Baking muffins to learn why breads have holes, and figuring out why one recipe used baking soda and one used baking powder (kitchen chemistry, as well as some acid-base stuff);
Figuring out whether normal, dried or soaked popcorn kernels pop best (including taste-testing), and freezing ice cream using baggies, rock salt and ice (solids/liquids/gases)
Making three kinds of "slime" (or gak or flubber) and explaining what non-Newtonian fluids are (my second-graders showed up some adults!)
Try these sites to get some ideas:
The JASON project was started by Dr. Robert Ballard (the guy who discovered the Titanic and other sunken ships)
Local colleges and high schools often present chemistry shows (or physics/science shows). Here's a plug for my alma mater: Lawrence University). I swear the show is more entertaining than the description on that page.
How about people who don't process sunlight well and freckle instead of tan? Does the pill give an even tan or really big spots? ("look! I'm now a dalmation!")
While I'm not a big fan of giving out even more identifying info, it'd really depend on how the info is used as to whether I'd object or not. Think of it this way:
Scenario 1: Your employer uses your social security number (or employee number or whatever number) to track you, so you're already a number. They don't use your identifying number (I hope) for much of anything other than keeping John A. Smith's records separate from John S. Smith's. In this manner, your personal, individual number is strictly an identifier, not to be shared with other parties.
Scenario 2: Your address and phone number was sent from your university (via your student financial aid, FAFSA, forms) to various telemarketers aimed at young college students (who are already in debt up to their ears so why would they need a a credit card thankyouverymuch?!) This kind of information sharing (your FAFSA form, which contains your address, social security, income, etc.) is, I think, highly questionable.
Yes, I realize that the retina scans aren't as easy to change or to fake as a social security number (which can't be easy to change either), but most people keep a single social security number for their whole lives. What's really the difference?
Slashdot Mirror
It is possible.
Here's a link to an article on how a similar compound works (sodium polyacrylate). This compound only absorbs 600 times its weight of distilled water, not a few thousand times.
Yes, if the bonds worked that way, that could happen.
But, metal-metal bonds (since they're actual bonds) will probably be stronger than any metal-water interactions. Water is not a good ligand. Sulfur, on the other hand, is an extremely good ligand, so since they're working with ZnS, I doubt it's anything to do with ligand interactions.
From the Minneapolis Star Tribune.
I did a little research into resveratrol last year. Here's some of what I found.
The "French Paradox" was the result of a study by Serge Renaud, a French physician, published in The Lancet in 1992. He found that although French and British citizens consume approximately the same amount of calories, the British had a much larger rate of fatal heart disease. This, despite the fact that the French smoked more, exercised less, and ate more saturated fats. The largest difference in this diet study was that the French consumed red wine.
So they decided that something in the wine gave the French an advantage. This, by the way, was televised by 60 Minutes on Nov. 17, 1991 (and an update on Nov. 5, 1995). (Yes, the TV special was on before the Renaud's article was published; studies have been going on for a while.)
Resveratrol is synthesized in plants as an anti-fungal agent, so it's found in the skin, seeds and leaves of grapes (not the fruit or juice).
To make wine, you squish the grapes, add yeasts, and let it ferment. The biggest difference between making red or white wine is that for red wine, you let the skins stay in the first fermentation. For whites, you filter out the skins after squishing them. Therefore, the red wine has more time to pull all the resveratrol out of the skins while it's fermenting.
Resveratrol itself is in a class of compounds called polyphenols. A lot of polyphenols have been found in wines, and resveratrol is not the only one that is now considered beneficial (it was the first to be characterized, so it gets the glory). At any rate, most scientists think that resveratrol acts as a radical scavenger or antioxidant in the body, which is where its benefits come from. Because of this scavenging property, resveratrol can help reduce the amount of HDL ("good" cholesterol) that turns into LDL ("bad" cholesterol). That, in turn, reduces the amount of coronary heart disease.
Don't get too many ideas about drinking a bottle a day though. A 10-year study by Gronbaek (British Medical Journal, 1995) showed that people who drank 1-2 glasses of wine a day increased longevity and decreased mortality from coronary heart disease over people who didn't drink at all. However, those who drank 4-5 glasses of wine per day still had a low mortality from CHD, but had a very high cirrhosis death rate.
Chemically speaking...
A molecule is something with a molecular formula, made up of a specific number of atoms (i.e., integer numbers). It also has a particular shape and its bonds are arranged in a particular way. Change one atom or one bond and you change the molecule and its properties.
A compound (like some of the zeolites and semiconductors others have mentioned) is a mix of bonded atoms that, on average have a formula that may contain fractions or decimals. Because this is an average, the compound has no distinct start or end, and if one atom is removed the average still probably holds.
Because water is a molecule (even though its ions are common), its formula will always be H2O... to a chemist.
I'm definitely not a techie, and even I understand (most) of the definitions given at whatis.com. More helpful may be the "advanced" search, where you can turn off the hits for webpages and news articles (so you only get the encyclopedia-ish hits).
Maybe I missed it, but where would all this information be located? Availability online still limits the stuff, as many people don't have internet capabilities at home. Availability in paper form (or microfilm or whatever) would be a physically enormous amount of data. Would people in other countries also get to see everything?
Would this eventually become retroactive; that is, we get to see what our tax dollars funded in the past?
It's a huge amount of stuff. Think of all the grants from the EPA, FDA (would we get to see drug trials?), NASA, NSF, DARPA, DoE (Energy, not necessarily Education), and so on.
Don't get me wrong; I completely support it, and am kinda curious about exactly what kinds of studies my taxes have funded. It just seems like there are some large problems to be thought through.
At my alma mater (which has a pretty good music school), the library has all sorts of recordings. Okay, for the music students, much of it's classical, but a bunch of it isn't. Like checking out books, you're allowed to make copies for scholarly reasons, but not personal reasons. The honor system was, I'm very sure, broken all the time, but it's one idea.
Oh wait... nobody uses that silly physical library anymore...
It could depend on how they define "strong." From the article (thanks for the mirror!), I think they mean tensile strength; that is, they take the ends of a rod or sheet and pull them apart until it breaks. This is very different from load bearing strength (holding a weight in the middle while suspended from the sides).
Because it's so flexible, would the stuff stretch under strain? This would be bad news in, say, semi-trailer beds.
It doesn't expand in heat, but does it shrink in cold?
Is it soluble in stuff like organic solvents, crude oil, gasoline, water, acidic conditions, etc.?
What kind of wear and tear can it maintain and still be functional?
...compared to men, the number of women who play 3D video games (and have played for years) is probably significantly lower. Is this just a manifestation of years of "practice" in the 3D field?
More research should be done on backgrounds of the survey-ees...
I don't put much stake in the whole "violent video games makes you eeeevil" thing either. It's sort of another source for ideas. Just how many murder mystery books have "inspired" murders? Think "Basic Instinct."
But kids don't read these days, so there've been fewer book-burnings...
Okay, I'm only a chemist (not a biologist), but how well will increasing the white blood cell count really keep you from getting sick? After a large dose of radiation, there should *not* be a negligible effect on the person, whether the radiation is what would kill him/her or not.
Assuming there's a nuclear detonation, there will be some people who are beyond hope, but what about the next level of people, the ones with, say, big burns and high-exposure? Will giving them a super-dose of blood cells cure everything, or just prolong their lives? It sounds kind of cruel, but after something traumatic like that, it may be more humane to just let them go.
I guess my point is, at what point should we be content to resign ourselves to letting people die, to allow them a higher quality of life?
Before you say there's no hope, talk to an administrator at your school; you may be able to take placement tests or something to get out of your current situation. States are required to provide educational support for all their students through high school (public anyway; private is a different matter).
Here's a link to the Arizona Dept. of Ed.. If you're really that good in math, you may want to be tested for "giftedness." (Note: being "gifted" has to do with smarts and the way you think; you may have lots of brainpower but not be gifted.) While I don't like that term (another matter entirely), public schools must provide "gifted" education, so this may be the loophole you're looking for (see page 18 of this pdf). (Caution: my school district counted the AP classes as gifted education.) Here's a link to the "gifted student" section.
In high school, I lived near the Twin Cities (Minnesota), and was pretty good at math. UMTYMP was a good experience for me. Once you test in (you need to know a little bit of algebra and be between 4th and 8th grades to start), you start with Algebra I & II the first year. The second year is Geometry and Trig, and then you do calculus until you're through high school. There may be something like this where you live.
"Real" jobs are seldom shown correctly in movies or TV. How many lawyer/cop/hospital shows are there?
However, even though the jobs aren't shown realistically, is that necessarily wrong? Didn't watching "Voyage of the Mimi" make you want to get into oceanography? Watching "Mr. Wizard" make you want to blow things up? Seeing "101 Dalmations" make you want to get a dalmation? (okay, maybe not, but dalmation sales did increase after the movie was re-released.)
My point is, maybe TV and movies don't show a realistic view of programming/chemistry/life in general. Every job, in some way, involves banging your head against the wall and filling out paperwork for some reason or another.
I'm not advocating lying about what your job really entails, but isn't it a good thing if you can get kids interested in something?
I'm not a CS person, although I have taken a little programming.
I studied C++ the way I studied other languages (German, Italian, organic chemistry, art history): Make a conscious note to yourself at the start of your programming that "I'm now working on COBAL," and do your COBAL stuff. Then, take a half-hour break and do something completely different (dinner, drawing, skydiving). When you come back to your desk again, say, "Now, I'm working on Visual Basic," and do the next set of stuff.
To quiz yourself, translate stuff from one to the other, find which works better, see if it gives you ideas for the original (don't do this until you're done with the assignment!
This sounds really stupid and self-evident, but I found that it works.
A family of atoms is walking down the street and the little baby atom runs up to his parents and says, "Momma! Momma! I think I lost an electron!" and the Momma atom says, "Are you sure?" and the baby atom says, "Yes, I'm positive!"
A neutron walks into a bar and orders a drink. The bartender plunks the mug down in front of the neutron. The neutron asks the bartender how much he owes, but the bartender says, "For you, no charge."
I'd venture to say that the majority of MS users have to use it, either for work or because that's what came on the PC when the shiny box was opened.
Most people are used to MS products, ranging from Word to PowerPoint to other programs that are business-specific but only run on Windows platforms. Because these people don't really have a say in what they run, they just use the stuff they're used to.
Similarly, businesses which run MS products on Windows boxes aren't going to suddenly switch to, say, Linux platforms just because. That would cost a lot of money in training all the employees. Also, some programs they used to use (I know of several small business-accounting programs and chemical drawing programs) are not available for non-Windows machines.
Costs run businesses. Habits run costs.
Here's a how-I-understand-it description:
The problem with wires is that they expand; the more heat/current passing through, the more expansion. If you're trying to propagate a wave through something that's slightly cone-shaped (rather than tubular), the wave will lose some of its integrity (it'll get larger rather than keeping its original shape). Also, if the wire gets smaller as you heat it (like using ZrW2O8 for the entire thing), the wave will be distorted (it'll get smaller and smaller).
Fiberoptics use a combination of materials: one that is essentially a traditional wire, and one that shrinks when heated. This produces an expansion in the normal stuff, and shrinks the other, creating a net expansion of zero! This way, the cable stays essentially the same size its entire length, and can propagate your signal with few distortions.
Substances that shrink when heated aren't new, and ZrW2O8 isn't new either. Here's a 1998 PDF from NIST on the stuff.
The first few pages of this nice PDF have a history of fiberoptics (the rest is an ad for the company).
Our hour-long show did not completely consist of forming gases and explosions. Those were the attention-getting experiments included in a couple of the skits.
I agree with you on some level. In most chemistry/science shows, weird and impressive things are done (flasks magically turn orange to black, a gummy bear shoots across the room with the addition of liquid, balloons explode into balls of fire), but five minutes after the show, the whole mess is forgotten as the show had zero context. This is where you say: "when will I use this in my life?"
The show with which I was involved provided a context: Ethanol is a powerful fuel additive, CO2 is produced so that bread rises, the Hindenburg burned because it contained hydrogen instead of helium. We received thank-you letters from the kids, some weeks later, and those crayon-covered papers were some of the best verifications that we had that they did remember the context (hence, the "real-life" application), and not just the explosions from our shows.
Experiments don't have to be huge, fancy-schmancy deals that take all day and have millions of data collection points. They can be more like snapshots. Try:
It's just thinking of things to do once you have a topic. Chances are, if you ever thought, "gee, I wonder how that works," the students in your class will too. Look it up!
Yes, some things are boring and dull, but many things don't have to be that way. I agree that science shouldn't be "candy" (it's not always so sweet), but you can have fireworks (it's the metal salts in fireworks that produce the colors).
I was involved in a chemistry show during college. Instead of the normal "look, this turns green and this turns red" kind of boring (and sorta pointless show), we took nifty demos that relate to real-life, incorporated them into skits, and performed for elementary- and middle-school kids. For example:
These experiements are pretty inexpensive, pretty simple, and can be impressive. It just gets the audience going. Chances are, the kiddies will remember something about hydrogen and helium exploding (or not) rather than what chemical turned the flask green.
Getting kids involved with something "real" (insert "tangible" or "active" if you like) is one of the best ways I've found to get them interested (as a student and an instructor). Here's some stuff I did while teaching at summer day camps at the Capital Children's Museum a couple of years ago:
Try these sites to get some ideas:
Good luck!
How about people who don't process sunlight well and freckle instead of tan? Does the pill give an even tan or really big spots? ("look! I'm now a dalmation!")
While I'm not a big fan of giving out even more identifying info, it'd really depend on how the info is used as to whether I'd object or not. Think of it this way:
Scenario 1: Your employer uses your social security number (or employee number or whatever number) to track you, so you're already a number. They don't use your identifying number (I hope) for much of anything other than keeping John A. Smith's records separate from John S. Smith's. In this manner, your personal, individual number is strictly an identifier, not to be shared with other parties.
Scenario 2: Your address and phone number was sent from your university (via your student financial aid, FAFSA, forms) to various telemarketers aimed at young college students (who are already in debt up to their ears so why would they need a a credit card thankyouverymuch?!) This kind of information sharing (your FAFSA form, which contains your address, social security, income, etc.) is, I think, highly questionable.
Yes, I realize that the retina scans aren't as easy to change or to fake as a social security number (which can't be easy to change either), but most people keep a single social security number for their whole lives. What's really the difference?