Fun With CHEMISTRY (of all things)

On a whim, I picked up a book at Barnes and Noble last month called The Periodic Table: Elements With Style!, by Basher and Dingle.

Buy this book. Buy all of these science books done by Basher. They are incredibly entertaining and can't help but be educational, as well. My kids DIG on this one that we have, the one on the periodic table. It makes the elements personal, memorable and completely approachable. We can't wait to buy the others in the series.

So today, I found a link to this site, PeriodicVideos.com done by the University of Nottingham. It features a clickable periodic table, with a short video linked to each of the elements. The style is a decidedly nerdy UK chemistry version of Mythbusters. The kids and I watched about a dozen of the videos this morning and, while they are quite advanced and much of their content is over our heads, they are highly entertaining (to us, but then we are a bit nerdy) and educational for whatever level you are at.

When we pulled out the aforementioned book to read up on each element before watching the corresponding video, the videos made much more sense and we really enjoyed watching them.

Chemistry. Who knew it could be interesting and fun? I wish I had known it before I took my chemistry class in high school, the worst class of my school career. Fortunately, my kids will not approach chemistry with the same sense of loathing as I did, thanks to wonderful resources like these.