Main ->Links->Latest Cool Links
This is where I stick my latest discoveries.
Try them and let me know (by e-mail
to dturner@haverford.org) what you think of them!
May 6, 2003 - the Virtual Museum of Bacteria is an idea whose time has come. If you are a student, you may write an entry for its files. http://www.bacteriamuseum.org/
May 6, 2003 - Meet the Water Bears - they are tiny little creatures with very odd properties. http://www.tardigrades.com/
April 23, 2003 - How do Marshmallow Peeps do research? One librarian looked at the process in Peep Research. http://www.millikin.edu/staley/fluff/peep_research.html
March 28, 2003 - I spent the last couple of days at the NSTA (National Science Teachers Association) annual meeting in Philadelphia. One of the websites I came across was Ology, hosted by the American Museum of Natural History. "Ology" means the study of something,a nd there are a lot of things to learn about on Ology. You can create your own "card collection" and create projects with them. http://www.ology.amnh.org/
March 12, 2003 - Oddmusic.com says it "is for anyone interested in unique, unusual, ethnic, or experimental music and instruments. So if you play stalagmites in a cave, the kaval, play telegraph wires across the Nullarbor Plain, call whales with a Waterphone, or just love listening, this site is for you." Play the Amazing Pencilina or the Bikelephone. http://www.oddmusic.com/
March 11,2003 - My student Alex found a great website for the history of the space program of former USSR: Russian Space Web at http://www.russianspaceweb.com/
March 1, 2003 - I've had a couple of conversations recently with friends and realized many who aren't African-American know very little about the African-American experience in the United States. PBS has a site called the African American World which has some fascinating stuff in it. Look and learn! http://www.pbs.org/wnet/aaworld/index.html
March 1, 2003 - Want to visit Mars? ExploreMarsNow (http://www.exploremarsnow.org/) has a really neat interactive demonstration of how we might live on Mars.
March 1, 2003 - Some really cool demonstrations of how our brains fool our eyes are at Lightness Demonstrations (http://www.pbs.org/wnet/aaworld/index.html)
March 1, 2003 - The Children's Museum of Indianopolis at http://www.childrensmuseum.org/kids/games.htm has Flash and Shockwave games for learning.
March 1, 2003 - How did modern words get to be the way they are? They grew from other words in older versions of English and from other languages. The Online Etymology Dictionary (http://www.etymonline.com/) is a good place to look up the origins of the words we use today.
February 17, 2003 - I admit I often send my sister and daughter "e-cards" - that is, e-mail postcards with pictures provided by various websites. But this one is too good not to share. Bloody Fingermail at http://www.bloodyfingermail.com/ will write your postcard message out in dripping blood.
January 30, 2003 - The Canadian Museum of Nature has a great Animal Index at http://www.nature.ca/notebooks/english/mon2.htm - descriptions of 246 different species of animal. The best is the mammal section.
January 30, 2003 - NASA is reviving the idea of the Teacher in Space, and NASA's Edspace is a site devoted to that idea. You can nominate me if you like. I'd go. Check out the video of how to use a toilet in space. http://edspace.nasa.gov/
November 14, 2002 - Thomas sent me another good one. Cool. Science for Curious Kids at http://www.hhmi.org/coolscience/
November 8, 2002 - Who doesn't like a good implosion? An implosion (unlike an explosion) happens when the force of a blast is directed inward, and it's a way of demolishing old buildings without damaging everything around them. There are videos and photos of all kinds of blasts at Implosionworld.com (http://www.implosionworld.com/) - thrilling! Try the section "Implosion Live!" for webcasts.
November 8, 2002 - There are many useless tricks such as burping the alphabet and bending your fingers backward, but can you master the skill of pen-spinning? Pentix has video clips, instructions, and detailed drawings to help you get started. http://pentix.modenstudios.com/
October 29, 2002 - In honor of Halloween, check out Brains for Zombies (an Amazon spoof). No, you can't really buy these brains. http://www.brains4zombies.com/
October 29, 2002 - What kinds of photographs could kids take? Look at Through the Eyes of A Child for examples. http://www.eyesofachild.com/
October 17, 2002 - I've lived long enough to see scientists change their minds about many things they once knew for sure. Strange Science is a neat little web site about the things scientists have gotten thoroughly wrong. http://www.strangescience.net/
October 12, 2002 - Fun Facts About Fungi at http://www.herb.lsa.umich.edu/kidpage/factindx.htm has some really neat stuff. The same student sent me this one as sent me the Tree Guide.
October 11, 2002 - A fourth grade student found a great Tree Guide at Athenic Systems (http://www.treeguide.com/). Click on North American Trees and you will enter a fantastic guide which includes pictures of leaves, fruit, and bark, geographical maps, and detailed descriptions.
September 8, 2002 - The Tree of Life is a Web project put together by scientists all over the world. It gives facts about many different organisms and also offers many Internet links for each kind of creature. http://tolweb.org/tree/phylogeny.html
September 8, 2002 - This is the time of the year when hurricanes happen. Find out about them at the National Hurricane Center - http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/
September 8, 2002 - It was a summer for wildfires. Why do they happen? How can they be prevented--or should they be prevented at all? What good is a forest fire? Find out at The Science of Wildfire at http://www.smokeybear.com/science.asp
August 29, 2002 - Have you ever wondered what the brain of a woolly opossum looks like? No? Well, I never wondered either but when I saw one I found it fascinating. Comparative Mammalian Brains will show you what their brains, and the brains of a bunch of other mammals, look like. Neat. http://brainmuseum.org/index.html
August 29, 2002 - The Newseum (an interactive museum of news) has a page called Today's Front Pages at http://www.newseum.org/todaysfrontpages/ - you can see the front page of 119 of today's newspapers, including such places as Australia, South Korea, and Arkansas. It's interesting to see the differences in what people think deserves to be on the front.
August 21, 2002 - Oh, dear. The BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) has a Science Playground page. With games. How bizarre. http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/games/index.shtml
August 17, 2002 - How many human beings live on the Earth? How many in the United States? Well, it changes all the time. The U.S. Census Bureau has two 'POPclocks' that show USA and world population projections, and which change as the population grows. They are guesses (nobody is out there counting every birth and every death), but they are pretty accurate guesses. http://www.census.gov/main/www/popclock.html
August 14, 2002 - Sometimes you can see things better when you look at them from a different angle. Visible Earth (a NASA site) allows you to look at the Earth in many different ways. http://www.visibleearth.nasa.gov/
August 1, 2002 - You can tell the science teacher in the audience when you go to the movies--she's the one saying, "Booo!" when the car's gas tank explodes upon impact, the bullets give off flashing sparks, and people jump through plate glass windows without getting injured. Not to mention that if someone gets hit by a shotgun blast hard enough to be lifted off his feet and blown backwards, the guy who shot him should also be blown backwards the same way. Insultingly Stupid Movie Physics at http://www.intuitor.com/moviephysics/ rates some recent movies in terms of their physics.
July 17, 2002 - Want to know what time it is? Yago Nakamuira's Industorious Clock will let you know up to the minute, in a slightly weird (and I think annoying) way. http://yugop.com/ver3/stuff/03/inde.html
July 12, 2002 - What's That Stuff? Chemical & Engineering News will explain what's in lipstick, toothpaste, and Cheez Whiz. Neat but occasionally disturbing. http://pubs.acs.org/cen/whatstuff/stuff.html
June 24, 2002 - Your eyes are controlled by many muscles and several nerves. What would happen if one or more of them were disabled? Find out at Eye Simulation Page (http://cim.ucdavis.edu/Eyes/Version1/eyesim.htm) (Shockwave required)
June 19, 2002 - Infrared Zoo shows you what animals look like under infrared light--which detects heat radiation. A warm-blooded animal like a mammal or a bird will really stand out, but so will a lizard that has been basking in the sun. http://sirtf.caltech.edu/Education/Zoo/zoo.html
June 16, 2002 - In fifth grade, we study the Periodic Table, which is an organized list (or "table") of the elements. Theodore Gray decided to make it into a real table--made of wood--and the result is at The Periodic Table at http://theodoregray.com/PeriodicTable/
May 26, 2002 - Scorecard, created by the Environmental Defense Fund, shows that the problem of pollution is right here. Type in a zip code to find out what is getting into the air and water where you live and who is putting it there. http://www.scorecard.org/
May 25, 2002 - Interactive Antique Illness: You think we have it bad in medicine today? No way. This 'Choose Your Own Adventure' style interactive exhibit walks you through the doubtful outcomes of 19th century health care. http://www.imss.org/intro.htm
May 9, 2002 - Visible Embryo lets you look at a developing human embryo in all stages of development. It's really compelling. http://www.visembryo.com/baby/index.html
April 20, 2002 - the California Academy of Sciences has a site devoted entirely to Skulls. http://www.calacademy.org/exhibits/skulls/ "Come, Explore, and Get Inside Our Heads," it says. Try it.
April 17, 2002 - Earth Day is April 22 (a Monday) and in case you don't know about it, read up on this at Earth Day Network (http://www.earthday.net/)
April 1, 2002 - Tom Conlin's Sushi Applet allows you to explore the brain in three dimensions by moving your mouse over various sections. The Sushi Applet is a fun way to explore the anatomy of the brain. See how many brain structures you can identify! Thanks to Eric Chudler's Neuroscience for Kids for this one. http://www.cs.uoregon.edu/~tomc/jquest/Sushi.html
March 27, 2002 - The best frog dissection website yet! Froguts.com has it all - next year I'm going to have my fourth graders do this one instead of showing them the video. http://www.froguts.com/
March 15, 2002 - Do you like Sodaplay and other interactive fidgeting sites? Well, Wireframe has some interesting little Flash things (http://www.wireframe.co.za/default1.htm), especially Puppet at http://www.vectorlounge.com/04_amsterdam/jam/wireframe.html
March 15, 2002 - When we study bones, one of the main ways we learn about them is with X-rays. Case Western Reserve University's Department of Radiology Children's Corner at http://www.uhrad.com/kids.htm has some really neat X-ray pictures of flowers, animals, insects, and things such as calculators.
March 10, 2002 - My father sent me this link: Refdesk.com, where you can look up everything using one page. http://www.refdesk.com/
February 17, 2002 - The Northern Lights or Aurora Borealis (meaning "northern dawn") are eerie displays visible in the polar area of the northern hemisphere of the Earth. See pictures, video, and screensavers at http://www.northern-lights.no/
January 31, 2002 - Nature's Puzzles and Fun is a collection of interactive animal games. (http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/fun2.html)
January 27, 2002 - Volcano Live provides up to the minute news on eruptions around the world http://www.volcanolive.com/
December 19, 2001 - Multiflyer - "As the pilot of a space ship far in the future, you must save the solar system from gravitational anomalies while learning and memorizing the multiplication table." You will need the Flash 5 plug-in to play. (http://www.gdbdp.com/multiflyer/)
November 27, 2001 - Orisinal has some of the neatest games I've seen - simple but fun to play and interesting. http://www.ferryhalim.com/orisinal/ - hit a cranky crab with a yo-yo or capture bees in a bubble. I nearly gave myself a finger cramp trying to get the guys on the rope to win the tug-of-war with the rhino.
November 27, 2001 - Discovery Channel's Walking with Prehistoric Beasts is a chance to see what it would be like to visit a zoo full of animals that don't exist any more. http://dsc.discovery.com/convergence/beasts/beasts.html
November 4, 2001 - Finally, we get to Mars without any major disasters! NASA is very excited about the successful orbit of the Mars Odyssey mission - here's its website - http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/odyssey/index.html
October 31, 2001 - A number of boys summarized a recent science news article about the newly discovered fossil of the SuperCroc that was 40 feet long and ate dinosaurs, and here's a marvelous site telling all about Project Exploration's discovery of them. http://www.supercroc.org/
October 27, 2001 - Having difficulty keeping up with your schoolwork? Or do you just want to get even better at it? The University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota has a Study Guides site which is full of useful suggestions. This is meant for college students but has many good ideas for younger students as well. http://www.iss.stthomas.edu/studyguides/
October 27, 2001 - With Halloween coming up and pumpkin-carving time here, I recommend Lanterns of Liberty (http://www.lanternsofliberty.com/) with patriotic patterns for carving.
October 27, 2001 - Or go to the source - Halloween on the Web at http://www.halloween.com - lots of scary links and some jokes (Q. What tops off a ghost's ice cream sundae? A. Whipped scream)
October 4, 2001 - The Sliding Rocks of Racetrack Playa in Death Valley, California, move by themselves. They leave tracks behind, though nobody has ever seen the rocks in motion. Visit http://geosun.sjsu.edu/paula/rtp/ (Paula Messina's site) for more (and an animation which is a little unsettling on the opening screen). Truly weird.
September 22, 2001 - Because of recent events, countries where the Islamic faith is dominant have been in the news a great deal. Although we have a large Muslim community in the U.S., many Americans do not know very much about this faith. Also, because news articles often refer to "Islamic" beliefs when the beliefs are held by only a few people who are Islamic, it is easy to get the wrong impression. Try the PBS site, Islam: Empire of Faith for an interesting overview. http://www.pbs.org/empires/islam/
September 15, 2001 - I think I'm in science-teacher heaven! Fear of Physics has animations that explain EVERYTHING important--collisions between big red trucks and little scooters, orbits around the Earth, the Doppler effect that makes sounds act weird. Sometimes the spelling isn't good but I'm willing to overlook that when the science is so good. http://www.fearofphysics.com/
September 15, 2001 - Want to know what the weather is like
in Boca Raton or Carlisle? Visit Weathercams,
where live webcams give you a feeling for the weather (though it's easier during
the day). http://www.weatherimages.org/weathercams/
September 9, 2001 - Looking for information about beans, I found Our Vegetable Travelers, a marvelous source of information about the everyday veggies we grow and eat. That's how I found out that navy beans, pinto beans, northern beans, and kidney beans are all the species Phaseolus vulgaris, which means "common bean" (actually "bean common") in Latin. http://aggie-horticulture.tamu.edu/plantanswers/publications/vegetabletravelers/index.html
September 8, 2001 - Even more pictures - this time of plants. The Virtual Foliage Page has links to thousands of pictures. http://botit.botany.wisc.edu/
September 7, 2001 - More pictures: The Earth Science Picture of the Day at http://epod.usra.edu/ - striking pictures of all kinds of things.
August 31, 2001 - You know those large, weird things that you find on the beach? They look like crabs but they're more closely related to spiders, and they have been around for a long time: horsehoe crabs. Visit the Horseshoe Crab web site and find out more about them (for instance, did you know they have nine eyes and can see by ultraviolet light?) http://www.horseshoecrab.org/
August 21, 2001 - If you want to find out about somebody famous or important, A&E's biography.com is a good place to start. http://www.biography.com/
August 19, 2001 - Most museums have more in storage than you will ever be able to see, and some of the things are fascinating. The National Museum of American History is trying an experiment - they've put some of their objects on display on the Web. They did some neat things with Java in order to do it - try it out. http://historywired.si.edu/index.html
August 17, 2001 - Try your hand at creating animations with 16 color at http://www.16color.com/
August 16, 2001 - I have seen many webcams, but never a house so wired as this one in the Netherlands at http://www.icepick.com/ - the trashbin reads the barcode of anything thrown into it and lists it on the Internet, the temperature of the refrigerator is tracked and graphed and a picture taken every time it is opened, and it shares data about the household cat in great detail! Really neat.
August 15, 2001 - : The Audubon Society protects birds and other animals through their conservation efforts. http://www.audubon.org/ - I participated in an ecology workshop at their Greenwich, CT center summer before last, and it was wonderfl.
August 6, 2001 - Lightning Explorer shows where lightning has struck in the US for the last 2 hours (www.lightningstorm.com/gpg/lex1/mapdisplay_free.jsp).
July 27, 2001 - It amuses me to send e-postcards, and Virtual Drawing is the most original one I've found! Draw your own picture online (using a Java applet) and send it to a friend. http://www.virtualdrawing.com/
July 26, 2001 - http://www.superbad.com/ - I have no idea who maintains this site or what its purpose is, but it's mesmerizing. I keep clicking and watching with my mouth open.
July 16, 2001 - Looking for nice dumb jokes to while away some time? Try Scatty.com, which bills itself as a "jokes site for kids and all the family." http://www.scatty.com/
July 16, 2001 - If you want to get an idea of the scope of the things science studies, look at The Power of Ten at http://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/primer/java/scienceopticsu/powersof10/index.html - click on "auto" for an overview.
June 25, 2001 - I approve of certain kinds of timewasters, and Nooflat is one of those. It reminds me of two of my other favorites, Sodaplay and Bedazzled (though it doesn't require as much intelligence as Sodaplay, it's summer vacation after all!). Nooflat is an interactive Flash site (Flash 5 required). Just sit and move the blobby things around with your mouse. (http://www.nooflat.nu/)
June 20, 2001 - I'm always on the lookout for good uses of interactive Internet technology to show the human body, and The Virtual Body is a good one. Give it a look at http://www.ehc.com/vbody.asp
June 18, 2001 - Wanna know what "mundungus" is? Why rain and sun at the same time is referred to as a "monkey's wedding?" World Wide Words explores the English language from a British viewpoint (http://www.worldwidewords.org/)
June 18, 2001 - STET Magazine, the latest in cutting-edge fluff, is at http://www.stetmagazine.com/TOC/toc.html if you want to waste a little time. I recommend Freaky Franks (my favorite toppings are tartar-control gel and chewing gum) and Dr. Michael (advice from a 9-year-old)
June 15, 2001 - Speaking of commercialism, my favorite shopping site this week is Despair.com (http://www.despair.com/) where they say, "The glass is half-empty. Deal with it." You can order from a superb variety of demotivational posters and plaques, or get yourself a T-shirt that reads "Another dissatisfied customer" (choices of shirt color are black, black, black, black, and black). I'm thinking of getting myself a poster of a tree being blown half-over in the wind which reads, "That which does not kill me postpones the inevitable."
June 13, 2001 - Blockcorner - an online building toy for kids of all ages. You make blocks and move them around using a simple programming language. Shockwave needed. I just wasted half an hour on it.When I have some time I'm going to make a castle. http://www.blockcorner.com/
June 12, 2001 - Cryptography is the science of writing in code, and Thunk.com is a great kid site for writing secret messages and scrambling words. Read the scrambled jokes! Oh, yeah, and V'z pyru lfd newfl zl yvexb. Ync zn xefj jqrc lfd cqvex fo cqnz (ucdaena@qrinaofau.fap) (http://www.thunk.com/)
June 12, 2001 - What is a Trilobite? They became extinct before the dinosaurs arrived, but they were once incredibly common. This is a nice little site about these bug-like fossils. http://www.aloha.net/~smgon/trilobite.htm
June 12, 2001 - Questacon is the Science and Technology Centre in Canberra, Australia - fun activities, games, exhibits, and more. http://www.questacon.edu.au/index_flash.html
June 11, 2001 - The Cyberspace Museum (of natural history and exploration) has a great Tyrannosaurus Rex exhibit. : Examine the T-Rex by body part. http://www.cyberspacemuseum.com/
June 11, 2001 - The Nonverbal Dictionary of Gestures, Signs and Body Language Cues is fascinating. Read about yawns, crying, smiles, and bows. http://members.aol.com/nonverbal2/diction1.htm
June 11, 2001 - EyeWitness - "History through the eyes of those who lived it" contains personal stories of important times in history. http://www.ibiscom.com/
June 11, 2001 - Science Playwiths is a nice amateur collection of the fun things you can do with science.http://members.ozemail.com.au/%7Emacinnis/scifun/index.htm
June 5, 2001 - Piano Graphique is a great way to irritate anyone else in earshot (turn the volume on your PC down), but it's so much fun! This site (you need Shockwave) turns your keyboard into musical instruments with five modes of play. In each mode, each key makes sounds and images. (http://www.pianographique.com/)
May 27, 2001 - Enter the world of Gobler Toys (http://www.goblertoys.com/), a spoof web site belonging to a completely imaginary toy company. One of the things I like (and fear) about the Internet is that if you can write HTML and pay for a domain, you can do just about anything you want, like presenting spoofs as if they are real. Sometimes (as in this case) it's funny.
May 27, 2001 - I don't often put up commercial shopping links here, but Museum Replicas (http://www.museumreplicas.com/)has a wonderful Internet catalogue full of things like Renaissance clothing, medieval weapons, Roman garb, ancient jewelry, and daggers, all of it illustrated with wonderful photographs and all for sale. It's great to look at all the pictures.
May 22, 2001 - Edible Insects ("or, more than you wanted to know about eating bugs") is at http://www.eatbug.com/ - Need I say more?
May 20, 2001 - Dive and Discover is a creation of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute. "Join scientists as they dive to the mid-ocean ridge thousands of meters deep. Explore towering underwater volcanoes, black smokers, and bizarre creatures that live there" http://www.divediscover.whoi.edu/
May 16, 2001 - Today in one of my fifth grade classes we were discussing drugs which can disqualify Olympic athletes, even some common over-the counter drugs such as decongestants and asthma medicines. Check out the USADA (United States Anti-Doping Agency) website at http://www.usantidoping.org/ to find out more.
May 15, 2001 - Savage Earth Online is about our crazy busy planet - volcanoes, earthquakes, tsunamis - and it confirms my impression that PBS puts up incredibly good websites to go with their programs.
May 6, 2001 - DNA From The Beginning (http://vector.cshl.org/dnaftb/) explains all the key concepts of heredity, chromosomes, genes, and DNA in text, animation, images, and videos. You need Flash Player from Macromedia and it's high school level, but it's still interesting.
April 15, 2001 - TryScience.org has some neat Shockwave simulations from science museums all over. I enjoyed telling the robot how to pick up the toxic waste the most. (http://www.tryscience.org/)
April 15, 2001 - Now I know I've had enough vacation - I finally have have time to waste. Why else would I find JigZone (http://www.jigzone.com) appealing? Maybe you will too. Put together jigsaw puzzles online.
April 15, 2001 - StudyWorks! Online (www.studyworksonline.com/) is a great site devoted to the math and science in everyday life. I really enjoyed doing the activity on global warming. This is aimed at grades 7 through 12, and it is produced by the publishers of a math software called StudyWorks.
April 11, 2001 - My student Bruce told me that the Professor Poopypants Name Generator link wasn't working - I found that it moved to http://ga2so.com/poop.html and my name is Gidget Gerbilbuns. Gee, thanks, Bruce.
April 10, 2001 - Sodaplay is one of my favorite timewasters (I've mentioned it before), and Sodazoo is an incredible collection of things people who visit Sodaplay have built! You have to see it to believe it. http://sodaplay.com/zoo/index.htm
April 2, 2001 - Extreme 2000: Voyage to the Deep! at http://www.ocean.udel.edu/deepsea/ takes you on a deep-sea dive aboard the sub Alvin.
March 29, 2001 - Visit Fotografia - Roger Eritja's photographs of insects are extraordinary (http://www.eritja.com/)
March 26, 2001 - A number of my students saw a recent Fox program claiming that the Apollo moon landing was faked. Aside from the dangers involved in believing most of what you see on TV these days when ratings are a far more persuasive motive than fondness for facts, there are a number of things wrong with the arguments on that program. Moonhoax at http://www.redzero.demon.co.uk/moonhoax/ takes on all the claims and debunks them one by one - check out "Faux Fox."
March 26, 2001 - Weird pick:: The Institute of Official Cheer at http://www.lileks.com/institute/index.html - "Where The Past Comes To Life - So We Can Promptly Beat It To Death Again!"
March 21, 2001 - What ever happened to the predictions about the future everyone was making in the 60s and 70s? For instance, we were going to have regular tourist travel to the Moon, and everybody would have much more leisure time. Yeah, right. Try Retrofutures at www.retrofuture.com/ to find out what we thought the world would be like by now.
March 14, 2001 - What does one penny look like? Sixteen? A trillion pennies? Find out at The Megapenny Project (http://www.kokogiak.com/megapenny/), which impresses the heck out of me.
March 13, 2001 - Using the Earth and Moon Viewer, you can "view either a map of the Earth showing the day and night regions at this moment, or view the Earth from the Sun, the Moon, the night side of the Earth, above any location on the planet specified by latitude, longitude and altitude, from a satellite in Earth orbit, or above various cities around the globe." You can also look at the Moon. This is cool. http://www.fourmilab.to/earthview/
March 13, 2001 - On a related note, the National Geographic Map Machine (http://plasma.nationalgeographic.com/mapmachine/index.html), though it looks as if it will overload an older browser, allows incredibly detailed views of the Earth in many different modes.
March 12, 2001 - The Biology Project - "An interactive site for learning biology" at http://www.biology.arizona.edu - is very clear and thorough.
February 10, 2001 - Another reference tool - XRefer - allows you to look up terms in over 50 sources at once. A nice starting point when you're looking up a topic.
February 9, 2001 - What with earthquakes in India and volcanoes in Mexico, does it feel lately as if we live on a dangerous planet? We sure do. Check out the U.S. Geological Survey web site at http://www.usgs.gov/, where you can see the latest list of earthquakes, the newest information about volcanoes, and the press releases about floods. This is an excellent site.
February 5, 2001 - VolunteerMatch will put you in touch with volunteer opportunities in your community - either one-time or ongoing. http://www.volunteermatch.org/
January 23, 2001 - Dinosaurs - kids still seem to love them, though they can't explain exactly why to me when I ask. The BBC's Walking with Dinosaurs site is really outstanding. Check it out at www.bbc.co.uk/dinosaurs/
January 18, 2001 - I use Quia for my review quizzes (http://www.quia.com/web/) - For someone else'se review game, learn the symbols and names of 40 common elements with this game at http://www.quia.com/jg/65539.html
January 15, 2001 - Want to know what time it is in Pakistan, Lagos, or Alaska? Try Timeticker at www.timeticker.com/ - it has a very soothing and pleasing appearance as well.
January 2, 2001 - This is mostly for adults: The Harvard Center for Cancer Prevention has a great risk assessment questionnaire for estimating Your Cancer Risk for all kinds of common cancers. I was relieved to find out that I have a below-normal risk for lung, colon, breast, and bladder cancer and a normal risk for skin cancer (no surprise, I have blue eyes and fair skin). http://www.yourcancerrisk.harvard.edu/index.htm
January 2, 2001 - The American Physical Society has a section called A Century of Physics (http://timeline.aps.org/APS/home_HighRes.html) which has a really well-done historical timeline showing the important discoveries in science in the last century.
December 30, 2000 - If you like looking at things under a microscope, I recommend The Molecular Expressions Photo Gallery. (http://www.microscopy.fsu.edu/micro/gallery.html) I particularly enjoyed the Virtual Electron Microscope and tryiing to bring the fruit fly into focus.
December 30, 2000 - Hunkin's Experiments is a funny site - cartoon directions for doing all kinds of interesting experiments, plus one or two that are jokes ("How to Make a Nuclear Reactor," for instance). http://www.hunkinsexperiments.com/
December 30, 2000 - I haven't tried this, but tveyes.com (http://www.tveyes.com) will track any word or phrase you choose and see if it is spoken on television. You just enter your phrase ("Bush team," "Microsoft," and "Britney Spears" are big right now) and your e-mail address and they'll e-mail you when your phrase is spoken. This frightens me. There is actually someone spending time on this, as a business?
December 30, 2000 - The Oracle of Bacon at the University of Virginia will help you play the "Kevin Bacon Game" (link any celebrity to Kevin Bacon in only a few moves) or you can play a game that will link any actor to any other actor. (http://www.cs.virginia.edu/oracle/) Yes I know this is trivial, but it could have been so much worse. I've been writing a unit on chemistry and my brain is operating on half a cylinder.
December 17, 2000 - One of the weirder problems of the present day is invasive species, or "those plants, animals, and microbes not native to a region which, when introduced either accidentally or intentionally, out-compete native species for available resources, reproduce prolifically, and dominate regions and ecosystems," as it says at Invasivespecies.gov (http://www.invasivespecies.gov/). I think this is even better than the Global Invasive Species Database I found below - at least I found something on the Asian eel here when I couldn't find it at the Global site.
December 13, 2000 - The Giant Pandas have come from China to the Smithsonian National Zoo for ten years. There will be a live camera in early January once they've settled in. Visit them at http://pandas.si.edu/
December 6, 2000 - The Museum of Unnatural Mystery is "a slightly bizarre, cyberspace, science museum for all ages" at http://www.unmuseum.org/unmain.htm - neat graphics, music, and information, intended, in its mission statement: "To develop the public's interest in science and the natural world by exposing visitors to information on the history of science, scientific method, and alternate science in an entertaining, but accurate, way."
November 26, 2000 - Cool Math for Kids is just plain dynamite. Games, self-tests, etc. - an "amusement park" of math. http://www.coolmath4kids.com/
November 26, 2000 - Building Big - what it takes to build bridges, domes, skyscrapers, dams, and tunnels. This is a a PBS site meant to accompany its series, with interactive labs. (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/buildingbig/) Most of the labs need Macromedia Flash. I liked the materials lab the best.
November 24, 2000 - The Internet Detective (http://www.sosig.ac.uk/desire/internet-detective.html) is "an interactive tutorial on evaluating the quality of Internet resources." It's meant for adults and high school age students, and I found it a good summary of ways to see if a site is a useful source of information. It takes an hour or so to work your way through it, though.
November 23, 2000 - The FootRule is a collection of unit converters of every possible type. (http://www.footrule.com) You can find out how many square poles are in a square meter, or how many miles in a light-year.
November 23, 2000 - The Global Invasive Species Database is the place to go to find out about organisms which have invaded other habitats and caused ecological problems. In other words, aliens invading Earth. (Though of course they're aliens from Earth). (http://www.issg.org/database/welcome/)
November 18, 2000 - Here's another search engine, or rather a metasearch engine - Ixquick (http://www.ixquick.com/). It searches other search engines, and it seems to select and display the results well. I like it even better than Dogpile. Give it a try.
November 18, 2000 - Like trading cards? Try the Mathematician Trading Cards at Mathcards ( http://www.mathcards.com/). I couldn't resist this, I don't know why.
November 15, 2000 - Yes, it's almost that time of year again. Snow will be falling soon. Find out about Snow Crystals at http://www.its.caltech.edu/~atomic/snowcrystals/
November 10, 2000 - Why Daylight Saving Time? The Institute for Dynamic Educational Advancement (IDEA) will tell you at http://webexhibits.org/daylightsaving/index.html
November 10, 2000 - How many websites are on the World Wide Web? Each year OCLC estimates the size of the Web. In June 2000, the number of unique Websites is just over 7 million, with 40% of those freely available to the general public. This would explain why you get far too many hits when you use a search engine. http://wcp.oclc.org/
November 5, 2000 - Endangered Earth has news, photos, videos, and stories about Earth's endangered animals. (http://www.endangeredearth.com/) I particularly liked the section about tigers (http://www.tigersincrisis.com/)
November 5, 2000 - If you like animals, Zooweb is the place for you! It's at www.zooweb.net and it is a gateway to many different zoos and aquariums on the Web.
November 5, 2000 - Virtual Fish Tank (http://www.virtualfishtank.com/) allows you to build your own fish and see how they behave. You need Macromedia Shockwave. Odd and interesting. It's a collaboration between the Museum of Boston and Nearlife, Inc.
October 29, 2000 - The Word Spy in its own words "This Web site and its associated mailing list are devoted to recently coined words, existing words that have enjoyed a recent renaissance, and older words that are now being used in new ways." (http://www.logophilia.com/WordSpy/) Words I found included "earballs" and "humpmunch." Pretty cool.
October 29, 2000 - My students love the Guinness Book of World Records - it's one of the most popular books on my shelves and my multiple copies wear out quickly. There's an online web site, Guinness World Records, run by the same people. It looks equally fascinating. (http://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/, of course) It runs a little slow even with a fast server, and many of the pages require plug-ins. Be warned.
October 28, 2000 - Like astronomy (the study of stars, planets, and other heavenly bodies)? Astronomy.com has a new look and a lot of great information. (http://www.astronomy.com/) It's a production of Astronomy Magazine (a friend of mine who worked on the site put me on to this).
October 9, 2000 - SciTech Daily Review at http://www.scitechdaily.com/ has interesting and thoughtful discussions of all the important science news. This isn't a news service, but something which points to interesting writing about science news, and it does a great job.
October 1, 2000 - Antimatter is the "evil twin" of regular matter. Or maybe it's the other way around. Anyway, we believe that if antimatter and matter were to get together, they would destroy one another in a burst of energy. At CERN they're trying to make antimatter, and they have a web site - Antimatter: Mirror of the Universe at http://livefromcern.web.cern.ch/livefromcern/antimatter/index.html
October 1, 2000 - It's interesting what you can find out about the place you live. Check out State and County QuickFacts, which is provided by the Census Bureau. It give frequently requested information. For instance, did you know Pennsylvania has about 11,994,016 people, but Montgomery County (where The Haverford School is located, mostly) has only about 724,087 and Delaware County (where I live) has about 541,502? (http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/index.html). I was curious about the difference. It seems odd that Delaware could have fewer people, because it seems as if it has more. I went back to the web site and found that Delaware County is about 184 square miles, while Montgomery is 483. So Montgomery County is less densely settled.
October 1, 2000 - It's autumn in the Northern Hemisphere (though did you notice it's spring in Australia during the Olympics?) and especially in Pennsylvania, where the fall foliage is beautiful. Celebrate it with Fall in PA at http://www.fallinpa.com/ where you can train a live webcam on a part of the forest.
September 24, 2000 - At Visible Earth, NASA maintains a gallery of images of Earth from space (http://www.visibleearth.nasa.gov/)
September 24, 2000 - You know how much I enjoy useless information. Well, so do other people. Try UselessKnowledge.com (at http://www.uselessknowledge.com/, of course), or Amusing Facts (http://www.uselessfacts.net/)
September 7, 2000 - Like optical illusions? Check out SandlotScience.com at http://www.sandlotscience.com/ - a rich collection, well presented.
September 7, 2000 - Professor Bubbles maintains a website called Bubblesphere which is entirely devoted to blowing bubbles at http://bubbles.org/
September 7, 2000 - The Howard Hughes Medical Institute has a site called BioInteractive (http://www.biointeractive.org/) which is designed for adults and probably way over my students' heads - but boy, is it cool, with many activities and animations. I enjoyed the animations of bacteria infecting the intestine. If you want to learn some advanced biology and medicine, check it out.
September 4, 2000 - The History Channel can tell you what happened Today In History at http://www.historychannel.com/today/ - for instance, "The September 4, 1989, issue of Forbes carried the first-ever floppy disks bound into a consumer magazine." On the other hand, also on September 4, 476, "Romulus Augustus, the last emperor of the western Roman Empire, was deposed by Odoacer, a German barbarian who proclaimed himself the king of Italy" I do love little things like that, much more than things like those "Joke-of-the-Day" services which usually recycle jokes I've already heard.
August 31, 2000 - Many, many satellites are orbiting the Earth all the time. There are thousands of them. A new page, J-Track 3-D, at NASA's Liftoff to Exploration (http://liftoff.msfc.nasa.gov/), will give you a real-time trace of the satellites. (http://liftoff.msfc.nasa.gov/RealTime/JTrack/3D/ JTrack3D.html ). You need a Java-enabled Web browser.
August 22, 2000 - It seems as if every time I find a teaching Web site that is just plain excellent, Discoveryschool.com acquires it and puts it on its own Web site (http://school.discovery.com/schoolhome.html). It happened with Kathy Schrock's Guide for Educators (great Web links for teachers at http://school.discovery.com/schrockguide/), Puzzlemaker.com (make your own word searches and other puzzles at http://puzzlemaker.school.discovery.com/) and B.J. Pinchbeck's Homework Helper. The last one is really neat - B.J. and his dad decided to put up a web site with great links for homework help when he was only 9. Now he is 15 and still maintaining it. (http://school.discovery.com/homeworkhelp/bjpinchbeck/)
August 21, 2000 - FactMonster.com is a reference site for young students. It seems clear and is attractive and brightly colored. Check out the study skills section in the Homework Center. http://www.factmonster.com/
August 1, 2000 - While researching the human digestive system, I came across the Life Of Dr. William Beaumont (1785-1853) and his unfortunate patient Alexis St. Martin. Dr. Beaumont is known as the "Father of Gastric Physiology." The story starts out sedately enough, but by the time I got to "His First Chapter With Alexis St. Martin" I was laughing so loudly at my computer that my daughter reproved me. Suffice it to say that Dr. Beaumont was "the first person to observe human digestion as it occurs in the stomach" and I don't mean with a microscope. No wonder St. Martin's family did what they did when he died. http://www.james.com/beaumont/dr_life.htm
July 27, 2000 - I like simple origami, because it's easy to come up with something that looks good (if you're not all thumbs) in a very short time. Clay's web site, Money Origami (http://members.cox.net/crandall11/money/index.html), has nice origami and adds a nice plus - they're all designs to be made with U.S. bills. I made the little box, because it looked like a great idea for the pair of earrings I wanted to give my daughter.
July 20, 2000 - Want to convert miles to kilometers? Or convert any other measurement to any other measurement? The Online Conversion website is just great. http://www.onlineconversion.com/
July 13, 2000 - Are you at the shore? Sandcastle Central (http://www.sandcastlecentral.com/index.html) has tips, tools, contests, photos, and the latest news about sandcastles.
July 10, 2000 - There are many arguments against allowing people to make home pages without close supervision. Squirrel Fishing is one of them. http://www.eecs.harvard.edu/~yaz/en/squirrel_fishing.html
July 9, 2000 - Teachers: Do you want to make your own WebQuest? In order to make mine, I used Filamentality (http://www.kn.pacbell.com/wired/fil/), a Pacific Bell "fill-in-the-blank interactive Web site that guides you through picking a topic, searching the Web, gathering good Internet sites, and turning Web resources into learning activities." I really recommend it. They will maintain your site on the Web for six months, or you can download what you made and put it on your own or your school's web-site.
July 8, 2000 - I tell my students over and over again that just because they see something on TV or hear an adult talking about it as if they believe it, that doesn't mean it's good science. The worst of these, as far as I'm concerned, are in the area of health. Sheesh. People seem to believe the most ridiculous, bogus things when it comes to health. Quackwatch (at http://www.quackwatch.com/) is "Your Guide to Health Fraud, Quackery, and Intelligent Decision, operated by Stephen Barrett, M.D." and it has pretty good coverage. I recommend it.
July 6, 2000 - Bartleby's has done it again - Gray's Anatomy is now online at http://www.bartleby.com/107/ - all 1,396 pages of text and all 1,247 detailed and astonishing illustrations of the human body.
July 6, 2000 - WORLDTIME® (http://www.worldtime.com/index.html) "is a service featuring an interactive world atlas, information on local time as well as sunrise and sunset times in several hundred cities, and a database of public holidays worldwide" - but what's really neat is you can see a graphic of the Earth in real time, showing exactly where it's night and day.
July 6, 2000 - If you're designing your own web site, it's not easy to make all your own graphics. Try Free Graphics (http://www.freegraphics.com/) which has links to all sorts of sites with everything from backgrounds to bullets. "Free" stuff usually comes with lots of advertisements, be warned.
June 27, 2000 - Wanna speak like a computer geek? The Ultimate Silicon Valley Slang Page (http://www.sabram.com/Slang/slang.html) will help you on your way.
June 27, 2000 - Suppose a friend sends you an e-mail which starts: "I wish to warn you about a new crime ring that is targeting business travelers" - they're having their kidneys stolen while they're in New Orleans - and goes on to tell you the aunt of a friend had this happen to her next-door neighbor! Wow - you've just received an urban legend. It's not true. At the Urban Legend Combat Kit, you can find help (http://www.netsquirrel.com/combatkit/index.html) - it's "a free collection of canned responses to help you combat Internet myths and urban legends. When someone sends you an urban legend, just cut and paste the appropriate response from this site."
June 25, 2000 - One of the things I like most about the World Wide Web is how easy it is for an individual (such as, say, me) to publish. That's also one of the things I like least about it. Cranks, dingbats, airheads, and loonies have equal space and access with sober scientists, responsible writers, and science teachers with a sense of humor. How can you tell the difference? Crank Dot Net (http://www.crank.net) "is devoted to presenting Web sites by and about cranks, crankism, crankishness, and crankosity. All cranks, all the time." He even has a "Crank 'O The Day" web site.
June 22, 2000 - Have you heard of the coelacanth, the Fish Out Of Time? (http://www.dinofish.com) It is a 400 million year old "living fossil" fish, once thought to have gone extinct with the dinosaurs. It was found to be alive and well in 1938 and is still sighted. The web site is run by the Coelacanth Rescue Mission and features fascinating facts and a "virtual swimming coelacanth.
June 15, 2000 - Yesterday I drove down to the Library of Congress to speak about my writing to a staff science fiction group. The Jefferson Building is the most spectacular thing I have ever seen, and I don't impress easily. I visited the Rare Books Division, where I was shown rare children's books -18th century horn books, pop-up books, and the original of the phrase "Goody Two-Shoes". Visit the Library of Congress online at http://lcweb.loc.gov - If you're a kid, click on America's Library: New Site for Kids & Families! "Log On ... Play Around ... Learn Something" it says. Or drive down and visit the museum in Washington for the day.
June 13, 2000 - A three-dimensional method to search the Net. Web Brain says its visual technique lets you explore related information, instead of having to go down long lists. At the very least, it's a very nice way of presenting information. http://www.webbrain.com
May 21, 2000 - Okay, here's a gruesome one. PBS has a Nuclear Blast Mapper. which goes with a program it did on the atom bomb. Supply Blast Mapper with any location, and it will display a map that shows a nuclear weapon's "zones of destruction" with that location at the center. I had the bomb fall on Philadelphia, and I don't like what happens to Haverford when it lands. Ooog. (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/bomb/sfeature/blastmap.html)
May 14, 2000 - People and Discoveries at http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aso/databank is a databank consisting of 120 entries about 20th century scientists and their stories. Read about Alexander Fleming, the discoverer of penicillin, if you want to know about the role of chance in scientific discovery. "One sometimes finds what one is not looking for."
May 12, 2000 - Build Your Own Cow, Version 2.05 at http://members.tripod.com/%7Espows/cow.html - oh, go ahead. It's stupid but worth a minute. I like my version with 4 tails, 1 leg, and 3 heads.
April 23, 2000 - Aching to know what "furtive" means, or "fiasco"? The Merriam-Webster Dictionary site at http://www.m-w.com/home.htm is a real pleasure - look up a word or try the Word Game of the Day.
April 22, 2000 - The universe might be flat, finite (not infinite) and have no edges or boundaries, as I've been teaching my fourth graders (part of my mission as a teacher is to make their brains hurt). Go to Jeff Weeks' Topology and Geometry Software web site (http://thames.northnet.org/weeks) and check out the "Torus and Klein Bottle Games" link to see what that might mean. I love tic-tac-toe on a torus.
April 22, 2000 - And while we're staring at the sky, how about the Astronomy Picture of the Day at http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html - a different picture every day, each one beautiful.
April 22, 2000 - A gentleman named Rob Rosenberger maintains a web site devoted to Computer Virus Myths at http://kumite.com/myths, and it's complex but interesting.
April 15, 2000 - By the way, I highly recommend "The Straight Dope" by Cecil Adams at http://www.straightdope.com/index.html ("Fighting Ignorance Since 1973 (It's Taking Longer Than We Thought)"); "The Straight Dope" is a syndicated column which answers all your important questions with all the necessary humor. Warning: he tells the complete truth.
March 30, 2000 - Sodaplay at http://sodaplay.com/index.htm is an interactive web toy. It is more fun than a Slinky. Run one of the simulations in reverse gravity, or try to build your own "walker." Try it. Hypnotic. I just wasted 15 minutes on it when I was supposed to be already on the road.
March 19, 2000 - Bewitched at http://www.bewitched.com. Whoever it is that maintains this site, he or she is a wonderful designer. I like "Starry Nights" the best, myself. Click on this and leave it up on your screen for a while. Hypnotic.
February 27, 2000 - If you would like to become a member of the Word Police and issue grammar citations, check out this website at http://www.theatlantic.com/unbound/wordpolice/ Go ahead, take the test! Who knows, maybe you could work your way up to being someone like Mr. Duffany.
February 21, 2000 - Want to see what reality looks like ten times bigger--and ten times bigger than that--and ten times bigger than that? You can see it at "Quarks to Quasars" (http://www.wordwizz.com/pwrsof10.htm) which is based on one of my favorite books, The Powers of Ten, written by Philip and Phyllis Morrison and the Office of Charles and Ray Eames. Warning: Graphics intensive As it says on the site: "At the center of each image, whether visible or not, are the quarks within a proton within a carbon atom beneath the skin of a man sleeping on a grass-covered Chicago field on the third planet from the star Sol -- a small unregarded yellow sun in the western spiral arm of the Milky Way Galaxy, an average galaxy within the Virgo Cluster." Very cool.
January 17, 2000 - Recent problems with NASA missions have made the news, but Discover Magazine pointed out in its February 2000 issue that since 1960, 18 Mars probes have failed to reach Mars - 14 of them Russian. Check out the NASA Chronology of Mars Exploration at http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/marschro.htm for details.
January 9, 2000 - I just discovered Explorezone.com (http://explorezone.com) which is a great site for science news for the whole family. Like many of the cool Web sites I find, it has been acquired by another Web company with an equally cool site, Space.com (http://www.space.com), which is a good source of space news.
December 30, 1999 - Webmonkey for Kids (http://hotwired.lycos.com/webmonkey/kids) is "the fun way to build web sites" offering lessons, projects, and tools for kids who want to build their own homepages, plus parent/teacher guies. I particularly like the way they say, "This Ad Helps Us Make the Site Free" next to the banner advertisements at the top of the page--you'd be surprised how many kids don't understand that ads aren't part of the site.
November 19, 1999 - Look up a phrase or word in Bartleby's Familiar Quotations: "A Collection of Passages, Phrases, and Proverbs Traced to Their Sources in Ancient and Modern Literature, by John Bartlett." At http://www.bartleby.com/index.html - Publius Syrus, 42 B. C., wrote "It is only the ignorant who despise education." He also wrote, "To do two things at once is to do neither."
September 22, 1999 - The calendar fascinates me. There's a great site about Calendars Through the Ages at http://www.webexhibits.com/calendars/index.html
September 22, 1999 - And while we're talking about calendars and time, the U.S. Naval Observatory maintains the Master Clock for the United States. (http://www.usno.navy.mil)
September 20, 1999 - You can find profiles of African-Americans in the Sciences at http://www.princeton.edu/~mcbrown/display/faces.html (updated July 25, 2001)
September 13, 1999 - Here's a good time-waster - All Mixed Up Hangman (http://www.allmixedup.com/cgi-bin/hangman/hangman). I played it twice; lost the first time, won the second. The words are hard! Then I played "Clunk," on the same site, and then I decided I had better go to bed before I stayed up all night wasting time playing games on the Internet. Save this for some time when you don't have homework.
September 13, 1999 - Wanna know what happened This Day In History? Yahooligans! has the answer at http://www.yahooligans.com/docs/tdih
September 9, 1999 - "Remember all those games you played as kid out in the backyard? Where did the those rules come from?" You can find out at Games Kids Play (http://www.gameskidsplay.net/)
September 9, 1999 - Do you have a weird science question your mom and your teacher can't answer to your satisfaction? Ask Dr. Universe at http://www.wsu.edu/DrUniverse - "You can ask Dr. Universe almost anything! She'll go to Washington State University's great team of researchers for her information," it says there - and she certainly does seem to go out of her way to answer everything.
September 2, 1999 - Want to know if writing "alright" is all right? Go to Common Errors in English (http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/) and find out! This is a great site.
August 22, 1999 - Wanna translate "Why do you teachers want me to work so hard?" into German so you can whine without your teacher knowing what you're saying? Easy! It's "Warum wünschen Sie Lehrer mich so stark arbeiten?" And all I had to do was go to AltaVista Babel Fish (http://babelfish.altavista.digital.com), type my English phrase in, and click to translate it from English to German. Unfortunately, if you translate it back from German to English, it says, "Why do you require me to teacher so strongly operate?" Oh, well. Anyway, Babel Fish is a great site for getting an inaccurate translation of words and phrases, somewhat like asking a French cabdriver for translation of a German poem into English.
August 20, 1999 - Looking for just the right words? I know I often sit in meetings and try to think of rhyming words for limericks, which indicates how much I love meetings. Try the Rhymezone at http://www.rhymezone.com/.
August 20, 1999 - One of my favorite sites in the world is Puzzlemaker (http://puzzlemaker.school.discovery.com). I use it to make all kinds of vocabulary puzzles for my classroom. I recommend it to any teacher, student, or parent who wants to make puzzles for friends, students, or children.
August 11, 1999 - Where is the driest place on Earth? What is the biggest bug? "Extreme Science" is a fun collection of facts like that at http://www.extremescience.com
July 1, 1999 - Marshall Brain wants to tell you how stuff works - including the stock market, how a television produces pictures, and what Y2K means. Go to http://www.howstuffworks.com to find out what he's explaining this week.
June 24, 1999 - wanna know about the science of skateboarding? Seriously, in order to do an ollie or a kickflip you have to use physics. Go to http://www.exploratorium.edu/skateboarding. I love the Exploratorium, a museum in San Francisco. This is part of a whole section on the science of sports.
June 24, 1999 - Although Aristotle said, "It is unbecoming for young men to utter maxims," it's always fun to read them: Quotes - http://www.arrakis.es/~avendano/quote/index.html has "Quotes, Aphorisms, Laws, and Thoughts," and Aphorisms Galore - http://www.aphorismsgalore.com has aphorisms. I've always admired Yogi Berra, who said, "If you come to a fork in the road, take it."
June 20, 1999 - Voyager Project Home Page - http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/ - The Voyager 1 and 2 probes were launched by NASA in 1977. In 1989, they completed their main missions, which were to fly close by Jupiter and Saturn (Voyager 1) and Neptune (Voyager 2). Then NASA figured, what the heck, these probes are still working, let's follow them as they leave. At speeds of 35,000 miles per hour, it would take them over 80,000 years to go to the nearest star - not that they're headed for Proxima Centauri (the closest star to us) in the first place. Unfortunately, the probes will stop working some time in the 21st century. As of June 4, 1999, Voyager 1 was 10,957,000,000 km away from the Earth. That's about eleven billion kilometers. And it's going away from Earth at about 32 kilometers per second.
June 17, 1999 - "Qué tal? in the Current Skies" - http://currentsky.com/ - This is a web site run by someone who writes an astronomy column for one of my teacher magazines. There are many good links and activities if you're interested in astronomy.
Copyright 2000, 2001, 2002 Delia Marshall Turner, Ph.D. All rights reserved.
The last time I went through this whole list to make sure it was still working was August 17, 2002. No guarantees since then!