This photograph from the “dust explosion” media piece is part of Chemistry Comes Alive! The demonstration illustrates the principle behind a grain elevator explosion.

By Terry Devitt, University of Wisconsin. If you’re a fan of the chemistry that makes things explode, glow, sputter, spin and change color, the Journal of Chemical Education has a Web site that will thrill your inner chemist. Produced at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the Web site Chemistry Comes Alive! features hundreds of videos of ice bombs, dust explosions, beating hearts made of mercury and the bizarre behavior of ferro fluids, all aimed at demonstrating concepts in chemistry.

What’s more, the site now has the distinction of receiving the 2006 Pirelli Internetional Award for chemistry, a prestigious Web award that comes with a cash prize of 15,000 euro. The award was presented earlier this month in the Temple of Hadrian in Rome.

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The site, according to Jon Holmes, editor of the Journal of Chemical Education Software, is geared for the general public and intended to share the awe-inspiring phenomena and beauty of chemistry. “We want to communicate to the public that science and chemistry, specifically, is exciting, thought-provoking and beautiful.”

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Holmes explained that one of the motivations for the site was to inspire young people with the beauty and excitement of chemistry just as an earlier generation of chemists was inspired by chemistry sets.

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The Chemistry Comes Alive! site is produced and maintained in the UW-Madison chemistry department by Holmes, chemistry professor John Moore and videographer Jerry Jacobsen. The site is a publication of the Journal of Chemical Education, which is owned and operated by the Division of Chemical Education of the American Chemical Society. The Chemistry Comes Alive! collection is currently being cataloged by the ChemEd DL, the NSDL Chemistry Pathway,

and will be available as part of their collections.

Established in 1996, the Pirelli Internetional Award is intended to foster the diffusion of scientific culture worldwide. Its chemistry selection committee includes one Nobel Laureate in chemistry.

This drawing of men engaged in hunting is by Dr. D. L. Kamat from a rock painting at Bhimabetaka located 40 kilometers south of Bhopal, India. The paintings are between twenty to fifty thousand years old.

Early humans scratched images of brave warriors hunting deer on cave walls to let others know what was going on in their lives. From books, to letters, to treaties, to published research findings, and public proclamations throughout the ages, our need to communicate about our individual and collective roles in the world has only increased as technology has made it easier for us to do that.

Skip thousands of years ahead to blogging across the Internet.

In a May 29, 2007 article by Cornelia Dean entitled, “Will Warming Lead to a Rise in Hurricanes?” The New York Times concluded with a recommendation from the secretary of homeland security, Michael Chertoff, “People living in vulnerable coastal areas should stockpile enough food and water to last at least 72 hours. “Your state and federal responders — they will not be there instantly when a hurricane arrives.”

Given our national experience with non-responsive emergency responders in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, this sort of advice logically answers the question posed in the headline and tends to get people talking about their individual concerns, as well as larger scientific issues related to Global Warming. Untangling the many strands of opinion and analysis from scientists on both political sides of the Global Warming debate has bloggers talking. This post by Sarah Burch from The Science Creative Quarterly, for example, http://www.scq.ubc.ca/ipcc-faq-part-deux-burch-mix-or-how-to-capture-the-climate-craze/, takes a stab at presenting Al Gore’s views alongside the Intergovernemental Panel on Climate Change’s Working Group report .

Why all the chatter? Because we will all be affected by policies that emerge from the debate about how much or how little global warming is influenced by human activity. Primitive humans let others know about how the hunting was in a particular area to ensure their mutual survival. Present-day humans talk about scientific issues and debate the merits of opposing points of view because our collective modern survival may depend on this type of significant conversation.

NSDL’s blogosphere is a place to talk about something interesting with topic experts, teachers and students. Add your voice to these ongoing conversations:

NSDL News Topic Center: Current Science Information is a classroom tool for teachers to use in tracking and sharing day-to-day changes in news stories with students and other educators. Each week this blog provides succinct science, technology, engineering, and mathematics analysis and links to NSDL and other resources about a science story that’s in the news. Please add your comments to recent posts related to global warming issues:

Southern Plant Species Bask in Northern Heat

Polar Bears Face Sudden Meltdown

How can digital education help the Gulf Coast? is a blog from “Katrina After the Storm: Civic Engagement Through Arts, Humanities and Technology,” a conference held one year after hurricanes devastated New Orleans and other Gulf Coast communities. Schools are open but struggling to replace libraries, equipment, and staff. Digital educators and others gathered to discuss the best ways to help. Please add your comments:

Where’s the New Library?

Supercomputers and Storms

Web Seminars Shore Up Schools

Like most school districts at this time of year, the Baltimore County Public School System (BCPS) is a beehive of activity as teachers, students and parents plan for graduations, put the final touches on summer reading lists, and look forward to “downtime.” The BCPS web site and the Office of Library Information Services web site are busy crossroads that report on opportunities and accomplishments by and for a distributed community of over 200 schools. Looking for ways to better support appropriate online resource selection as BCPS works to align assessment, teaching, professional development and online resources was what led Della Curtis, BPCS Coordinator of Library Information Services, to consider adding the NSDL toolbar to all computers in her school district. In addition, the NSDL link and toolbar were added to the recently designed BCPS Maryland High School Assessment Portal - an initiative to bring together exemplary resources to support student learning of the Maryland Voluntary State Curriculum in tested areas such as Biology, Algebra, English, and Government. The NSDL Toolbar is a convenient way to keep access to the National Science Digital Library handy while browsing the Internet.

Ms. Curtis recently presented the advantages of disseminating the NSDL toolbar to the BCPS superintendent’s executive leadership group. The toolbar provides school districts with both uniform access to all NSDL collections on school computers by adding an NSDL search box to browsers, while also ensuring that teachers and students have access to high-quality STEM subject-specific Pathways web sites.

Download the NSDL Toolbar here.