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Neatorama Spotlight, our new wide-format blog, is lucky to have an excerpt from Theo Gray’s fantastic book Mad Science: Experiments You Can Do At Home – But Probably Shouldn’t.
In the book, Theo compiled years of the best articles from his Popular Science column Gray Matter. For example:
Making a Deadly White Phosphorus Sun by Theo Gray. Photo: Mike Walker
In 1669 the pompous German alchemist Hennig Brandt accidentally discovered white phosphorus while boiling urine in Hamburg. He became the talk of the town by demonstrating its amazing luminous powers to scientists and dignitaries.
In a cruel irony, 274 years later the discovery he’d hoped would turn lead into gold instead turned his city to ashes when a thousand tons of white-phosphorus incendiary bombs created one of the great firestorms of World War II; 37,000 people died when the sky burned over Hamburg. Yet even today, white phosphorus is still used as a weapon.
I’ve used red phosphorus to make a batch of kitchen matches. Although both red and white phosphorus contain nothing but the pure element, red is mostly harmless on its own, whereas white is near the top in every category of dangerous. It’ll ignite spontaneously and burn vigorously until you deprive it of oxygen. One tenth of a gram inhaled is fatal, and smaller doses over time can make your jaw fall off (seriously – it’s called phossy jaw).
Find out how you can make a metal spoon that melts in hot coffee, cast your own silver bullet, build your own lightbulb, freeze electricity and more. Plus, Win a free copy of the Mad Science book by sharing your most memorable science class experience.
There’s a lot of fascinating things about molecular biology (I should know, I have a PhD in biochemistry and molecular biology) – but a lot of students get discouraged from learning it because it is taught poorly in school. To be fair, the topic is rather complex – if you don’t get the basics right, it’s easy to get confused and lost later on – and many of the textbooks of biochemistry, cell biology and molecular bio are b-o-r-i-n-g. Heck, I’ve read phone books more interesting than some of ‘em.
Enter The Manga Guide to Molecular Biology
The book is ostensibly about the adventures of Rin and Ami, two students that have been skipping their molecular biology class. They were summoned by Professor Moro for a special summer school on his private island (complete with a virtual reality machine, a hunky TA … and a terrible secret. What is it? Oh, I’m not going to tell you). But amidst all that fun, there’s actual learning.
Take, for instance, the explanation about how the liver enzyme alcohol dehydrogenase works in breaking down alcohol:
Read more after the jump: more …
