Saturday, April 18, 2009

Elements of style

Check out this example of pedagogical brilliance I just discovered (by acccident, waiting for a friend who went to the 2nd floor bathroom at the Union Square Barnes & Noble). It's from a cute little chemistry book for kids (and the young at heart) by Adrian Dingle and Simon Basher called The Periodic Table: Elements with Style. Each element is designed like a character from a video game, and comes with a page of information about its distinctive properties, powers and affinities with others. It's like a better-designed version of one of those dense books on video game characters from which kids memorize reams of very specific information all the time. Brilliant, huh?