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[ This column concludes a piece on science and
mathematics sites begun in
the last issue. ]
 The Exploratorium is a “museum of science, art and human perception” in
San Francisco. Its Web site has been online since 1993, and has so far
grown to over 10,000 pages, serving seven million visitors a year. The
Hubble Space Telescope, webcasts, games and activities, “Your Weight on
Other Worlds”, the science of skateboarding . . .
Designed to support students and teachers and anyone interested in the
subject, Geo Explorer is a comprehensive portal to the world as seen by
the geographer. Maps, facts, dictionary, photos, cartoons, news, puzzles
and quizzes, plus much, much more.
Professor Stephen Hawking's Homepage is his own site, written by him and
maintained by his grad assistant, with bio (“A Brief History of Mine”),
recent lecture transcriptions, plus the inevitable motor neurone disease
info.
HotAIR is the work of those intrepid souls who produce the magazine
The
Annals of Improbable Research (AIR). Like the magazine, the site devotes
itself to research that makes people laugh, and then makes them think.
These folk are also responsible for awarding the Ig Nobel Prizes "for
achievements that cannot or should not be reproduced". For many
scientists, doctors and engineers, AIR is the only science journal they
need, so how can Bikwil not recommend it?
If you've ever wondered how your car engine works, try the very
informative How Stuff Works. What about how cell phones work? Or a U.S.
spy plane? Rainforests? Toilets?
Welcome to the Hubble telescope, at
HubbleSite. News and facts, sure,
but most of all there are beautiful pictures of stars, planets and
galaxies. "The grace and beauty of the universe." Maintained by the
Office of Public Outreach of the Space Telescope Science Institute.
Run under the auspices of the Smithsonian Institution and the American
Society of Mammalogists, Mammal Species of the World “contains the names
of the 4,629 currently recognized species of mammals, in a taxonomic
hierarchy that includes Order, Family, Subfamily, and Genus”. You may
search by scientific name or common name.
The Museum of Paleontology at the University of California (Berkeley)
invites us to “Discover the History of Life” through its museum
collections. Learn about phylogeny, geologic time, evolution. As well as
activities and exhibits of general interest, there are special education
programmes catered for — from kindergarten to university.
How do pilots skywrite? What happened to the Mars Polar Lander? Should
all bioscience research papers be available on the Net for free? Why are
some “man”hole covers rectangular? Is Dolly the sheep really a clone?
What percentage of the world's population are flying on aircraft at any
given time? What's the significance of the recent discovery of a 3.5
million-year-old humanoid skull in Kenya? Ask
New Scientist.
The U.S. Navy's Office of Naval Research runs the educational
ONR
Science & Technology Focus: Oceanography, which is full of fascinating
ocean information. Its subpages are collected under the headings Ocean
in Motion, Habitats, Ocean Life, Ocean Water, Ocean Regions, Research
Vessels and Resources. Photos of course, plus diagrams and quizzes.
Unsurprisingly, there's an American emphasis.
A Periodic Table of the Elements may be designed for elementary, middle
school and high school students, but if you're older than them and you
need to brush up on your atomic weights or Mendeleev, this is still the
place to come. Maintained by the Los Alamos National Laboratory's
Chemistry Division.
How about visiting
Powers of Ten? “View the Milky Way at 10 million
light years from the Earth. Then move through space towards the Earth in
successive orders of magnitude until you reach a tall oak tree just
outside the buildings of the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory in
Tallahassee, Florida. After that, begin to move from the actual size of
a leaf into a microscopic world that reveals leaf cell walls, the cell
nucleus, chromatin, DNA and finally, into the subatomic universe of
electrons and protons.” Sure, it's designed primarily for school
students, but this small dinosaur was hooked too. (Needs Java to work.)
Reading the Human Map gives you “facts and implications of the Human
Genome Project.” Here you can learn about the basic science as well as
the ethical. legal and social issues associated with this most important
of undertakings. Basically this site is a reference list of articles to
be had on the Internet, including the animated primer on DNA by James
Watson himself.
Let’s not forget
Scientific American. The illustrious
SciAm has been
going strong in print since 1845 and on the Internet for several years
now. The best part about its Web site is that it makes available in full
at least two articles — sometimes more — from every issue going back to
1996.
SciTech Daily Review is a companion site to
Arts & Letters Daily. They
reckon their site is “the best intelligent, informed science and
technology coverage and analysis you can find on a daily basis, sourcing
a huge range of great writers and excellent publications”. And they're
probably spot on.
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