Periodic Tabloid

In science education, it is an uncontested article of faith that modern instruction is best when it involves active participation rather than passive reception of information through lectures. Who would dare to challenge this cherished assumption?

The goal of public engagement is to find creative ways to help people understand the basic principles of science and how its methods produce new knowledge. To this end CHF gathered a group of 13 top thinkers for a daylong exploration of the subject.

Greetings from the American Association of Museums conference in Houston! My colleagues and I are have gathered here to discuss what the museum of the future might look like—including CHF.

Joanne Manaster, an online course developer and lecturer at the University of Illinois, uses some fun tools to explain a not-so-fun experience for a number of us at CHF: allergies. Even if you are blissfully sniffle-free this time of year, it’s worth watching to see what happens when the hammer is introduced.

During the final days of the Philadelphia Science Festival, I got to know Marie Curie. I don’t just mean that I got to know about Marie Curie (though I certainly did), but rather that her appearance—in the form of storyteller Susan Marie Frontczak—left me feeling acquainted with a brilliant and complex woman, not just a celebrated persona.

A 2006 UNESCO report estimates that only 27% of scientists worldwide are women. While women in chemistry fare slightly better than some in other disciplines, their rate of retention within the industry still causes concern. As part of its ongoing commitment to women in science, last week CHF held a two-day celebration of female chemists. 

The April 21 issue of Nature has a whole section devoted to “The Future of the PhD.” The gist is that the world’s system of doctoral education needs to be fixed, overhauled, or done away with.

In 1980 physicist Luis Alvarez and his chemist compatriots published a paper arguing that an iridium-rich meteorite smashed into the earth 65 million years ago, causing mass extinctions, and leaving behind its signature in the form of an iridium layer.  Artist Lynn A. MacIntyre turned this piece of science history into art.

Since its launch last Saturday on the Ben Franklin Parkway, the Philadelphia Science Festival has delighted thousands of science buffs with events across the city. And the party continues in the coming week with dozens of events still to go, including two at CHF.

The Oral History Program  is excited to start a new series on the Periodic Tabloid: First Person. Every month we will highlight one of the over 400 oral histories in CHF's collection. The first is Hubert N. Alyea.