Promoting Science and Critical Thinking
Its Chemistry today. Past winners have included well-known names such as Ernest Rutherford, Marie Curie, and Linus Carl Pauling, so who has won and also why? The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2011 was awarded to Dan Shechtman “for the discovery of quasicrystals”. Quasicrystals are structural forms that are ordered but not periodic. They form patterns that … Read more
Yesterday the medicine prize was awarded to Dr Steinman, and then it soon emerged that he had passed away days before. Now, since the prize rules state that they cannot be awarded posthumously, there was a bit of a fuss about what would they do? I speculated that they would let it stand, and guess what, … Read more
You have all heard of it, it is the “Nobel Prize“, the top award bestowed by some Scandinavian committees in recognition of cultural and scientific advances. But why does it get so much attention, and why is it the top prize when there are lots of other awards out there? Lets explore this a bit … Read more
Its IgNobel time … and as summed up by Nature … Then there are the Ig Nobel awards. These come with little cash, but much cachet, and reward those research projects that ‘first make people laugh, and then make them think’” — Nature And the 2011 winners are … PHYSIOLOGY PRIZE: Anna Wilkinson (of the … Read more
Now here is a cool little 10 min clip that I’ve come across. Its Richard Feynman talking about the scientific method. Here is a very brief summary … How do we find a new law? we guess it then we compute the consequences of the guess then we compare that directly with observation to see … Read more
Andrew Brown writes in the Guardian (with a picture of some bloke setting things up at the Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky) … At least creationists have given it some thought. Would you rather an indifferent or a passionately wrong child in the science classroom? Let’s not simply sneer at Darwin deniers If you read … Read more