Fascinating Science Makes Learning Chemistry Fun
Subscription: 2 years for $40 (student pricing) • Web site: www.fascinatingscience.com
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By Kyle Zook

If you, like many homeschooling parents, are struggling with a way to introduce Chemistry materials into your child’s curriculum, Fascinating Science may prove to be the answer you are looking for.  Dr. Sheldon Margulies developed this material on chemistry after completing his third book, The Fascinating Body, as sort of a companion to that work.

The system consists of a series of 32 Internet-based Flash-powered lessons on Chemistry-related topics.  Since the material exists in cyberspace, students have the opportunity to complete the lessons at their own pace, and in the comfort of their own home.  It’s like having your own personal chemistry tutor right on hand, 24 hours a day!

The lessons are fairly comprehensive, covering the gamut of knowledge generally expected of high-school level chemistry classes.  By utilizing graphics and voice-over narration, this clever multimedia presentation may just be the best way to introduce to children the often complicated concepts related to chemistry.  Such concepts as how atoms bond, why they bond, and how bonding explains everyday phenomena in biology, earth science, meteorology, astronomy, and nuclear physics and much more are all explained in easy-to-understand language with appropriate illustrations.

Dr. Margulies has arranged the lessons in a step-by-step, logical approach, similar to the methods he employed in writing his three books.  As Dr. Margulies puts it, “The principle underlying Fascinating Science SM, Everyday Doctoring, and Learning Law is that students remember best when the material makes sense -- when there are logical reasons for how things work.”

This series is particularly great for homeschoolers, since they would qualify for the student discount, saving 43% of what schools are normally charged.  Basically, the price would be comparable to what you would pay for an educational CD-ROM, but much more lucid and entertaining than any of the products I’ve come across on the same subject.  Also, having the series online means that there’s nothing to download, nothing to install (other than the Flash player, which is pretty much a web necessity nowadays).  Since so much software has been released in the past with bugs and spyware in them, I personally relish not having to install anything further on my computer.  Doubtless, many kids will take an instant shine to this method of instruction; after all, they’ve never known a time without computers.

Still not convinced? Great, since Dr. Margulies has provided eight free lessons from the series on the Fascinating Science web site.  Take the demo test drive and see for yourself if the Fascinating Science series is right for you.  Yes, you heard right; you can see eight of the 32 available lessons, all for free.  You can see for yourself just how easy it is to navigate through all of the lessons—jumping from slide to slide is a breeze with the side navigational system.  There’s even a short quiz at the end of each lesson, just to make sure the material is understood. So, as the saying goes, what have you got to lose?

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