If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be. Thomas Jefferson, letter to Charles Yancey, 1816
Thinking is hard. Writing is hard because it requires thinking. Both thinking and writing involve time and concentration-commodities that these days are hard to come […]

Everyone wants more for less. That’s human nature, but it’s not necessarily a good long-term strategy for human society, especially when there are unanticipated, unintended negative consequences. Everyone would like lower electric bills, for example, but most of us paying the lower bills will not have to pay the full costs of global warming, many […]

According to Gresham’s Law, bad money will drive out good money (1). In economics the law applies to situations where two things of different value are either perceived to have equal value or are required to be accepted as having equal value. For example, if a government requires that all coins of the same denomination […]

The National Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Medicine have just published a book, Science, Evolution, and Creationism that should be read by all scientists and teachers of science (1). An eight-page brochure summarizes the book and is an excellent way to stimulate and inform discussions of evolution, creationism, and “intelligent design”.
The brochure describes […]

The theme for this year’s Chemists Celebrate Earth Day is Water—Streaming Chemistry. As we do every February, the JCE editorial staff has collected a broad range of articles in support of that theme. We hope this issue, and others we have done in the past, are really useful for those who are planning Earth Day […]

The title is a variation of the motto on the coat of arms of the state of Michigan: Si quaeris peninsulam amoenam, circumspice. Looking about the Journal of Chemical Education is perhaps more complicated than seeking and viewing a pleasant peninsula, but it can be equally rewarding. Because this issue marks the beginning of the […]

“STEM educators should be viewed as a valuable national resource”
National Science Board
The National Science Board (NSB), governing body of the National Science Foundation (NSF), unveiled at its October 3, 2007 meeting A National Action Plan for Addressing the Critical Needs of the U.S. Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics Education System. Released in nearly final form […]

“Scholarship in the chemical sciences and engineering may include discovery of chemical principles, integration of chemical knowledge within both formal academic and informal public arenas, application of chemical knowledge to new problems and situation, and the study of teaching and learning of chemistry and related sciences.”
American Chemical Society
 
Opportunities for Collaborations Among Scholars
The Board of Directors […]

The theme for this year’s National Chemistry Week is “The Many Faces of Chemistry”. In support of this theme, Erica Jacobsen and Betty Moore coordinated the series of career profiles of chemists on pages 1564, 1567, 1569, 1572, 1574, 1575, 1576, 1578, 1579, 1581, 1582, 1583, and 1585. The diversity of careers described there as […]

All of us can learn a lot when a very effective teacher communicates about teaching. An example is an interview with Eleanor Siegrist, this year’s winner of the James Bryant Conant Award in High School Chemistry Teaching, that begins on p 1408. Reading Siegrist’s answers to the Journal’s questions led me to think further about […]