Review: The Illustrated Guide to Home Chemistry Experiments

Geeks everywhere weep for the modern chemistry set. There was a day when kids of all ages could perform all sorts of fantastic experiments. We were not unfettered by safety rules -- guidelines were strict and clear. You do not mix certain things. This is flammable and that is acidic. And yes, some of us made gunpowder and other explosives. It was a magical time of daring and high adventure.

Then came the dark times, when set manufacturers bowed to the fear of litigation. Gone were the no-holds-barred outfits where nitroglycerine was seemingly a page-flip and beaker-shake away. No longer were we presented with rules and rationales, and expected to follow. Instead, manufacturers decided we were too dumb to be trusted with our own experiments, and tried to sell us "spa science" and "candy chemistry" and other pseudoscientific pap. Kit manufacturers no longer had the stomach for the real deal. And when they made that decision, they doomed themselves to irrelevance.

Today is the DIY era, and we don't need a set to learn about chemistry. All we need is the internet and the Illustrated Guide to Home Chemistry Experiments by Robert Bruce Thompson.

In the book's introduction, Thompson makes two basic points: that commercial chemistry sets are dying, and that science education is getting worse. He tells the story of Jasmine, his young neighbor who told him that her middle school only teaches 15 minutes of science per day. He thought he'd let her use the pro-quality chemistry lab he has in his basement, but without a guidebook she'd be lost in all the possibilities. It was this situation that induced him to write the book.

In an email, Thompson told me why he believes public schools' science curricula are suffering so much. Mainly, he said, safety concerns, limited facilities, and lack of qualified teachers are to blame. However, he was especially down on the Bush education initiative, No Child Left Behind. "NCLB is the real killer, because it focuses the attention of school teachers and administrators on meeting NCLB requirements, which focus almost entirely on reading and math. NCLB doesn't specify science requirements, so schools don't 'waste time' teaching science. You can't really blame the teachers and administrators; their jobs depend on students scoring well in reading and math, so guess what, they focus all their attention on teaching."

As for as chemistry sets go, the only one Thompson felt had any value was the Thames & Kosmos C3000 kit, though he said it "would have been considered an entry-level chemistry set back in the mid-60s." He said the Smithsonian line of chemistry sets have been discontinued, "and the Thames & Kosmos web site has been unresponsive for a month now, which really worries me." Even the Internet has few sites that provide robust science education for kids. "There are a lot of 'making slime' type experiments," Thompson said, "but they're mostly presented as, in effect, magic shows, rather than going into the science behind the phenomenon being looked at. They're useful only in the sense that they may interest some kids in pursuing chemistry, but not in the sense of actually teaching them anything much about chemistry."

So that's it, can nothing be done? "The first chemistry sets became available about 80 years ago," Thompson explained, "but people had been doing home chemistry for more than 100 years before that. They built their own chemistry sets. Now that commercial chemistry sets are a dying breed, we're just going to have to go back to building our own, at least if we want our kids to learn chemistry."

And that's where Thompson's book comes in.

The Illustrated Guide to Home Chemistry Experiments is a hefty tome with over 400 pages. The initial chapters focus on preliminaries such as maintaining a laboratory notebook, safety, as well as two huge sections on equipping a home laboratory with glassware and chemicals -- remember, you can't rely on a set to give you everything you need. Next comes a laboratory skills chapter, covering measurements, filtration, separations, and so on.

It goes without saying that the section on lab safety is as robust as it is necessary. However, Thompson took it a step further by making a conscious decision to leave out any illegal content such as explosives and meth labs. "Obviously, there's a very real danger involved, and I'd feel terrible if a kid blew himself up," Thompson explained. And of course, in today's world, an author has to pay attention to legal liability issues, both for himself and the reader. "Back 40 years ago when I was a teenager, the local cops pretty much looked the other way when kids played around with explosives. Making explosives nowadays is a sucker bet. You're going to get caught, and you're likely to face federal charges. It just isn't worth the risk."

And then Thompson jumps into the experiments. They start off easy -- the author targets middle schoolers with the initial projects. Here are my favorites:

10:1: Reduction of Copper Ore to Copper Metal -- smelt'em if you got 'em! I always wondered how this was done.

16.1: Produce Hydrogen and Oxygen by Electrolysis of Water -- never again worry about running out of rocket fuel and air on those long space voyages.

However, one of the most tantalizing sections is the one on forensic chemistry. The final chapter, it's kind of a sneak peek at Thompson's next book, which will be about home forensics experiments. It includes such experiments as detecting blood, testing for drugs and revealing latent fingerprints.

There you have it. Set manufacturers may have given up the ghost, but with an awesome book of experiments, all sorts of possibilities come into play. "I think it's critical that every student be exposed to science," Thompson said. "Not that I expect all of them or even many of them to pursue careers in science, but having at least a basic understanding of science is important for anyone in today's world. And very few of our students are getting even that basic understanding."

As I mentioned earlier, Thompson, who also wrote the Illustrated Guide to Astronomical Wonders, is working on a book on home forensics: "It's serious forensics lab work, including stuff like fingerprinting, drug and poison analysis, soil analysis, fiber analysis, questioned documents analysis, and so on. Real stuff, not the fake stuff that you'll find in the few forensics books targeted at students."

By teaching professional methodologies and trusting his readers to follow them, Thompson has done a huge service to smart kids everywhere. This book brings home chemistry back to the good ol' days.

Nerdage.net Review: WowWee Chatterbot

Sometimes, all your computer needs is a little personality. Sometimes (*cough beige box cough*) it needs a lot of personality. WowWee's new line of Chatterbots might be the answer.

These collectable, highly stylized character figurines always have something to say about what you are up to -- and it's not always appropriate!

Each Chatterbot features a unique personality and a signature animation. Connect directly to your Mac or PC using the included USB cable, then listen and watch as your Chatterbot entertains you with its unpredictable stream of jokes, dialog, and comments about your virtual life.

WowWee currently offers three models:

Dog/Cat: A dog sitting in a litterbox with a kittie squished underneath.

Devil/Angel: A blue devil with a pitchfork, harp and halo, sitting on a cloud.

Fairy Godfather: A mobster-looking guy dressed like a ballerina. He sits on an easy chair and clutches a magic wand.

Interfacing with email, the web browser, calendars and instant messaging, the Chatterbot is triggered by these data sources and animates and/or makes comments relating to the text. The bots represent an extension of WowWee's robots (such as the Robosapien) which can be programmed to demonstrate certain simple personality traits -- for instance, friendliness or irritability. The Chatterbot can be set to make jokes, spout out trivia, or make wisecracks about the website you're visiting. You can even press buttons to "punish" and "praise" the bot, presumably altering its behavioral parameters.

It's hard to say how hackable these bots are. You can certainly tweak the keywords the bot reacts to in order to customize it to your own tastes. Hardware-wise, other than the animation aspect, the Chatterbot basically serves as a speaker, and in fact the various models can be used as iPod speakers. On the other hand, the Chatterbot's quips are all .WAV files, so it's a simple matter to record your own, as long as you don't expect it to sound the same as its normal voice.

When all is said and done, the Chatterbot has a lot of potential and I'd love to see WowWee support the line over multiple generations. As the interface and personality evolve, expect to see the Chatterbot become more of an electronic pet than a curiosity. Like a program in beta, you can really see its potential while acknowledging that it has only begun its journey.

The Chatterbot may be found at the following stores: Circuit City Online, MacMall.com and the WowWee Online Store. Look for it at Target.com and iQVC.com in the next few weeks.

GeekDad Review: Matter

Imagine a peaceful human-alien civilization has spread throughout the galaxy. Trillions of citizens live in harmony, wars are a distant memory, and science has progressed to godlike levels. For those in the technological pinnacle, even death is no longer a threat, as a person's memories can be backed up and reinserted into a cloned body. A citizen's height and weight can be altered, or sex changed at will. Even his or her species can be changed. Well, you've just imagined the Culture, the fantastic universe conceived by Iain M. Banks.

Peaceful, sleepy civilizations do not make for epic storytelling, so Banks shows us the cracks in the Culture. In any society, inevitably some people are left behind, inadvertently or by choice. Some segments of the population possess only medieval technology, with swords, armor, horse-equivalents and primitive firearms. They are aware of the Culture but for them it is a mysterious and not terribly interesting phenomenon that has little bearing on their day-to-day lives. In Matter, Banks describes protagonists of this sort. They are the children of Hausk, the king of a low-tech level of Sursamen, a shellworld. (A shellworld is an artificial planet whose surface consists of several nesting spheres, creating a vast amount of real estate.) After the throne is usurped, word reaches the princess, Djan Seriy Anaplian, far away on Culture business as an agent for Special Circumstances, the most notorious black ops agency in the government. She has become a one-woman battlewagon, but is so far away that it'll take months for her to return home. Her two brothers, one a bookworm and the other a playboy, are forced to adapt and grow stronger in order to survive the upheaval. Meanwhile, the usurper has discovered something unimaginably ancient and mind-bogglingly dangerous. In orbit, huge fleets lay in hiding, watching the proceedings.

By the time I'd read fifty pages, not only was I hooked, but I was sure Matter was this year's Hugo award winner. It's a dense, almost 600-page tome, but it starts quick and I was grabbed immediately. And Banks doesn't go easy on you with the alien names and concepts. The fact that so much of the background info is difficult to parse, and yet the book is so readable, demonstrates Banks' writing skill. The characterization is complex and unexpected, and the setting, despite its complexity, is totally consistent and believable. Banks has a gift for apt phraseology, especially the courtly speech of the principal characters. But it's the subtle touches that make this setting so rich. In Banks' universe, for example, AIs have quirky senses of humor. For instance, one AI-run space ship is called the Don't Try This at Home. Another is Lightly Seared On The Reality Grill.

Banks has written seven novels in the cycle, beginning with Consider Phlebas in 1987. I haven't read any other of these, and though I want to, I don't feel like I missed anything by not having read them. Also, Banks has written a dozen non-genre novels.

Of all the books I've read of ultrapowerful galactic civilizations, this one does it best. Incredible tech and a huge scope, yet telling a very human story that stands out among the vastness. I'm definitely reading his other Culture books.

In Search of the She-Geek

I asked my 3-year-old daughter what would happen when she was a grown-up lady. The first thing she said was, "paint my nails." I asked what else. "Get a box of tools."

That's my girl!

As the dad of two girls I had long pondered the dynamic between nerdy and non-nerdy, where it applied to girls and women. Naturally I wanted my girls to be Class-A geeks so I created a dichotomy in my head where there were princesses on one side and geek girls on the other. What I have slowly begun to understand is that the two are not necessarily exclusive of one another. Why can't Rosie be a girly girl but also be smart and good with tools? Toward the goal of learning more about what makes women geeky, I read She's Such a Geek: Women Write About Science, Technology, and Other Nerdy Stuff. Edited by Annalee Newitz & Charlie Anders (who also edit the well-received science fiction and futurism blog io9.com) the book features a cast of genuine her-nerds from around the United States.

Before we get any further, I should point out that the book's subtitle is not entirely accurate. It should read "Women Write About Themselves." Which is fine! I read the book to learn about them, not about science and technology. Each of the contributors wrote a essay for the book describing themselves, their motivations, experiences, and passions. Some were math nerds, others built video games. The editors were careful to keep the spectrum as diverse as Sesame Street.

In some respects, geeky women are pioneers. Being a male geek in the '00s is something of an old hat; only the acceptance and coolness is new! But as the writers frequently described, entering this putatively male world was usually a difficult journey, combining genuine sexism with culture clashes and simple misunderstandings. In response they have taken geekiness and put their own spin on it. They defy male-centric categorization and in general cause a ruckus.

As with any group of people, you'll like some of these women and detest others. I found some overly boastful, while others wallowed in their own bitterness and disappointment. Chalk some of it up to gender difference -- reading about these women's romantic lives didn't interest me but might fascinate a woman. For the most part, however, I enjoyed the stories and felt like I understood, at least to a degree, what they experienced. My favorite essays were by gamer extraordinaire Morgan Romine and astronomer Aomawa Shields. Ms. Romine discovered the advantages of being a female gamer (hyper chivalry!) and used it to carve out her own online empire... literally. Ms. Shields' story could inspire anyone. After quitting her astronomer job and starting a new career, she unexpectedly got a second chance and grabbed hold of it with both hands.

Having finished the book, I find myself with new ammo in my quest to understand my maybe-proto-nerdy girls, and perhaps to encourage them a bit. Do I have all the answers? Nope. Do I have some of the answers? Maybe.

"Rosie, what do you want to be when you grow up?"
"A robot."
That's my girl!