The Scientific Toolbox

Do you remember the “5-second rule”? Any food item dropped on the floor is “safe” to eat as long as it doesn’t remain on the floor for longer than five seconds before being picked up.

But is this actually a good rule to live by? A high school senior recently carried out a scientific study to find out whether or not the “5-second rule” was a good measure of food safety. The work was done during a seven-week internship at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (check out the UIUC press release here).

What a great example of making science fun and accessible to everyone!

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I received an e-mail the other day from Dan Huan who is the project leader for this project at the Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center (LSUHSC).He and his group have created a Web site that is a resource for teachers who are interested in covering clinical laboratory science in their classrooms. They have lesson plans, image banks, project ideas and instructions for building low cost digital microscopes for the classroom (approx. $100 to $150 each).

The Medical Center of Louisiana site also has suggestions for how to link up with a local health sciences lab.

This weblog is meant to be, as my subtitle says, a clearinghouse of ideas for bringing science into the classroom. I’m not sure this format will prove successful at reaching teachers, parents, scientists, science educators (or whomever else may be involved in science education and/or science outreach). Therefore, I would very much appreciate it if you would e-mail me any general comments/suggestions. Alternatively, you can leave a comment related to any individual posting on the blog by clicking on the “Comments” link beneath each posting.

Thank you!!

If you have any suggestions for posts, please feel free to send them to me and I will consider them for publication on this site. I am very interested in links to physics, chemistry or engineering activities (since this is not my area of expertise).

Thanks!

The server was down for a few days so I wasn’t able to access this web site. Over the next couple of days I will try to make a few extra posts to make up for my down time.

I am getting closer to actually starting to post regularly on my blog. I promise that at some point in the near future, my blog entries will actually be relevant to bringing science into the classroom!

After a brief struggle with MS Frontpage 2000, I have decided to venture into HTML territory and am creating my own page template for my teaching portfolio. My problem with Frontpage is that it wouldn’t allow me to put the same navigation buttons on each page of my “web”. There are multiple advantages to writing the HTML code myself: (1) I will learn more about HTML and (2) My teaching portfolio will be very similar in appearance to this blog. Aesthetics are important.

If you want to see how things are coming along, click the “About the author” link (on the left of this page) to get to the other half of this website.

This blog is still obviously under construction. However, I am making progress and I think I finally have the colors the way that I want them. Of course, they may change at some point in the future. I am concurrently working on putting my teaching portfolio on-line and will eventually have this blog and my portfolio on the same server. Currently the rough draft of my teaching porfolio is on my personal page on the Princeton University server.