I view my role as providing some hopefully entertaining and interesting ideas that cross the borders of both disciplines. A Scientist Goes to Desert Storm Observations of scientific interest during the Persian Gulf war and Operation Provide Comfort in Kurdistan. Includes views of the oil fires, effects of modern weapons, and public health problems in refugee operations. Also includes a few scenes of scientific interest from Bosnia in 1996. In the past two decades spectacular progress has been made in understanding why minerals and materials in general display the colors they do.
Ionic crystals owe their colors to crystal-field mechanisms.
Metals and semiconductors owe their colors to the existence of energy bands. In a semiconductor, there is an energy gap between the energy levels of the valence electrons and the energy levels that can be occupied by free electrons. There is a vast industry in the United States that is engaged in the manufacture and dissemination of scientific misinformation . Pseudoscience, or ideas that claim scientific validity but are demonstrably faulty finds an audience for a variety of reasons . Virtually all pseudoscientific theories have elements of the anti-authoritarianism that fueled the Laetrile campaign of the 1970's.