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NETSURFER SCIENCE
More Signal, Less Noise |
Volume 03, Issue 01 Tuesday, January 11, 2000 |
NETSURFER LINKS
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EARTH SYSTEMS http://www.recycle.net/
COMPUTING AND ENGINEERING http://www.cs.usask.ca/homepages/grads/moa135/856/RE/RE.html
Homemade Empire State Building Almost everybody tried, as a child, to build towers, using whatever material we could get our little hands on, ranging from wooden tiles to playing cards through snow drifts and packing crate. Now, if you're still so inclined, you can make the experience a little more interesting for you and your kids, whether you're a parent or educator. In addition to offering ideas for a basic building activity, it turns your to more construction activities, each with at specific purpose or designed as a specific simulation. We built one of them ourselves in case Y2K problems felled Netsurfer World Headquarters. It's a little cramped, but we call it home.http://www.cs.bsu.edu/homepages/kirkwood/Talltower.htm E Ink's been getting a lot of, well, ink recently, and no wonder with their clever electronic ink technology that looks like regular printing but has the readily changeable, updateable, and flexible nature of electronics. This site explains how the technology functions and outlines potential applications ranging from billboards through handheld displays to electronic books and newspapers. The technology really is very ingenious, and the animated explanation is easy to follow and well worth watching: OK with regular html, but best with Flash. The site also provides links to recent e Ink press releases and articles about the technology and the company. This company is not the only one with an electronic ink product, but certainly one to watch. http://www.eink.com/technology/index.htm This page presents a very simple introduction to the skill of orienteering and in particular, compass reading. The absolute basics are covered first, such as what the compass needle does and how to find directions other than north with a compass. The tutorial then moves on to discuss using compasses with maps, covers magnetic declination and for dedicated orienteers, a page on navigating in fog. The author then goes on to recommend some good compasses both for beginners and experts, and of course there is the ubiquitous collection of links. http://www.uio.no/~kjetikj/compass/ ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS http://www.astro.uva.nl/demo/sun/
A Beginner's Guide to Cataclysmic Variables You've heard of things that go bump in the night, but what about things that go boom in the night? The sky isn't as serene as it looks on a clear night. Among many, many other types of objects in the sky are cataclysmic variables (commonly called CVs). Cataclysmic variables are close binary star systems composed of a small, massive star called a white dwarf and a larger less massive star called a red dwarf. How close are they? Close enough that the red dwarf star loses mass to the white dwarf star - and that's where the boom comes in. For the how and why, this Beginner's Guide to Cataclysmic Variables, maintained by the galactic astronomy group at the Mullard Space Science Laboratory, is the place to start. You don't have to be an astronomy expert to understand the information presented in the guide. Clear, concise explanations combined with helpful graphics and useful links (should you decide to explore the wonders of CVs at a more advanced level) make it accessible to just about anyone who wants to learn about one of the things that goes boom in the night.http://www.mssl.ucl.ac.uk/www_astro/gal/cv_beginners.html Looking for a way to encourage your kids to take an interest in math and science? Check out The Women of NASA. The site's purpose is to encourage young women to become mathematicians and scientists, so it is geared mainly towards teachers and young students, but it also gives you an indication of the broad range of people NASA employs. The site features profiles of some of the women of NASA, teaching tips, resources, and chats (some require registration) in English and Spanish. Our only complaint is that the color scheme is hard on the eyes--blue links on a light green background. Still, this site is worth a little eye strain. http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/women/intro.html MATHEMATICS, PHYSICS AND CHEMISTRY http://www.physicsweb.org/article/world/11/6/8
Voices of Girls in Science, Mathematics, and Technology The Voices project is a three-year program to help girls gain confidence and do well in science, math, and technology. Voices is also about learning how to help girls do well, and whether there are differences between urban and rural environments. The Web site tries to give a sense of what Voices is about and provides some sample material as well as a contact address. Granny Did What? is an investigative project on folk remedies, for example, while What the Voices Girls Have Taught Us provides abstracts of a few papers written about the project.http://www.ael.org/nsf/voices/voccurr.htm String Theory Isn't about Guitars Once upon a time there was the atom, the indivisible particle, the fundamental of matter. Then, we discovered that atoms aren't so indivisible; broken, they give birth to many other particles. Now, science argues, those particles are not like points, but like strings. Yes, like tiny lines (actually, so tiny that to our instruments they look like points), that vibrate at different frequencies. Why and how? Those questions are part and parcel of the Holy Grail of current theory in physics, the quest for a unifying theory that reconciles the consistencies and inconsistencies of general relativity and quantum theory. String theory has almost entered science's pop culture, but pitifully few people really understand what it means, even in its grossest terms. Now. you can amaze your friends and impress your co-workers. For broad strokes about things nearly infinitesimally tiny, clearly laid out in lay language, take a look at this smart Short Course in String Theory. We promise you'll come away with a better understanding.http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/interact/longterm/horizon/121196/string.htm Now de riguer at every tennis tournament is the radar gun and board tracking the speed of serves coming off the raquets of bigtime players like Greg Rusedski (149 mph) or Venus Williams (117 mph). Wonder apart, we think that the speedier the serves, the less interesting the match, especially on fast courts like Wimbledon or Flushing Meadow. The tennis powers think so, too, and they're concerned enough to look for ways to slow balls' speed. There are options. We might use a slower court - but Wimbledon without grass wouldn't be the same - or limit the power of tennis raquets. The most promising method, though, seems to be changing the balls. As explained at this site, English researchers have studied tennis balls, noting that the most important parameter affecting their speed seems to be diameter. It's almost intuitive, of course: the larger the diameter, the greater the drag and the lower the speed. We say that if that ugly neon fuzz isn't enough, they could always try those very photogenic soccer balls. http://www.physicsweb.org/article/world/12/6/3 Violin Acoustics, But This Is Only the Beginning The musical acoustics group of the School of Physics at the University of New South Wales takes a bow with this rich site on violins. It's a motherlode of information about violins, their acoustics, sound theory, and links to sites like Violinsources or The Catgut Acoustical Society. (Too bad you people never knew what a laughriot we dweebs in the band were.) The only drawback to this site? Many words about violins, but no sublime sound sound files.http://www.phys.unsw.edu.au/~jw/violindex.html MEDICINE, BIOLOGY AND ZOOLOGY http://wellness.ucdavis.edu/safety_info/poison_prevention/poison_book/food_poisoning.html#questions
ANTHROPOLOGY, SOCIOLOGY, ECONOMICS, AND GEOGRAPHY http://www.glhs.org/activity/glhsown.htm Portals are everywhere on the Web, so it's no surprise that we found a portal site wholly devoted to law. FindLaw is a gateway for everything law-related: law schools, cases and codes, firms, organizations and more, not to mention careers and dictionaries. Don't be afraid to visit, though. It's designed for a much wider audience than just lawyers. FindLaw offers people-oriented pages, for everyone from students to the general public and business. We could say more, but you'll learn much more by surfing it. No one interested in law will overrule us. http://www.findlaw.com/ SCIENCE LITE http://www.math.grin.edu/~hamilton/fnord/condiments.html
RESIDUE Aristotle, On the Gait of Animals This essay of over 7000 words, translated by A.S.L. Farquharson, comes to us from across more than two millennia. It's interesting not so much for what it tells us about how animals move, as about how Aristotle thought and the intellectual foundations of his day. What Aristotle discourses upon, class, is this: "why are man and bird bipeds, but fish footless; and why do man and bird, though both bipeds, have an opposite curvature of the legs." More questions follow, some disturbingly profound. Of course the understanding of the day contaminates his conclusions and infects his thinking, but what Aristotle does superbly well is to show us the enduring, eternal power and advantage of asking questions, and of careful observation and looking with attention.http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/gait_anim.html Normally, we take a hardline rationalist approach to the world - 'though we're not immune to The Sixth Sense and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. But, given the dire expectations flitting around the millennium, we thought it wise to stay current on anything that might give us a nasty surprise in the next little while. Whether you're an X-phile or disappointed that Armageddon wasn't visited upon us a couple weeks ago, or you believe in none of the above, ParaScope is a site worth the visit. Here you'll find articles about UFOs and the disappearance of Mars Climate Orbiter, followed by recent articles about Satan - still up to no good, we're told - and Nostradamus. And, if you think closer encounters are in order, check the Parastore and stock up your bunkem - er - bunker, maybe with the UFO anthology CD-ROM. http://www.parascope.com VoyCabulary is a strange looking page that seems baffling at first, the point of it not at all obvious. You type in a Web address or a block of text, choose which of five dictionaries you want to use and away you go. You end up with a site or text in which every word is underlined. Click on any word and up pops a dictionary definition. The references include a thesaurus, and medical, computer and acronym dictionaries. Take care where you use it, though. It doesn't take kindly to frames; we made it work but it took a little editing of Web addresses to do so. The site also provides translation on a word by word basis from English into any of ten languages - and vice-versa - including French, Russian, and Japanese. This place would be great for those ponderous, baffling, incomprehensible blocks of text. And no excuse now for not knowing swear words in ten languages! http://www.voycabulary.com/ |
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