Instructify

BY BILL FERRIS

A friend of mine recently lamented the decline of citizen science. Whereas guys like Newton would conduct all manner of experiments himself, if today’s non-university-employed Average Joe even tried to order the equipment necessary to conduct a proper experiment he’d likely find himself on some terrorist watch list.

I’ve no idea how much he was exaggerating, but It makes me wonder if, were there a greater scientific interest among regular citizens, do-it-yourself science would make a comeback. That may or may not be realistic, but a good place to start would be the ChemPod podcasts from Nature.

Mark Peplow, your cheerful British host, will guide you through the hottest chemistry topics, whatever they might be (sorry, I’m an English major). The most recent episode features two Nobel-Prize winners chatting about ribosomes and the reprogramming thereof. Count on developments involving the usual heavy hitters in chemistry, including DNA, RNA, MIT, and the GFP (that’s green fluorescent protein, a discovery that netted Martin Chalfie a Nobel Prize — do you see a trend in the quality of guests this program gets?).

Episodes happen at a frequency of once every two months — not exactly frequent, but lucky for you, Nature has been quietly churning these podcasts out for a couple years, so you can keep yourself busy while waiting for new installments. You can also use that time to incorporate what you’ve learned in these podcasts into your teaching. Maybe send the URL to your students and see if they’re inspired to do a little citizen science themselves.

ChemPod podcasts

Related stuff:

Go on a scientific expedition to the south pole with PolarTREC

Win a Nobel Prize…or at least pretend to

Believe it or not, you can find the period table online at Periodictable.com

Add The Biochemists’ Songbook to your .mp3 collection

Photo credit: inocuo on Flickr.