Hydroelectric Dams
Although hydroelectric power represents a relatively small portion of the world's energy resources, it is still an important commodity with great potential. To harness hydropower, civil engineers must design dams that convert the kinetic energy of water into electricity.The fundamentals of general-use dams are discussed on the home page of the US Society on Dams (1). Besides providing brief background information, there are a few examples of the benefits of dams to society. For a much more techn
World Soil Resources Map Index
From the US Department of Agriculture's office of Natural Resources Conservation Service, the World Soil Resources Map-Index Web site contains nineteen global maps as well as several regional and country maps related to soil. The global maps include such topics as Global Soil Regions, Soil Temperature Regimes, Water Holding Capacity, and Wind Erosion; the regional maps contain information from Afghanistan, Africa, Albania, Lithuania, and Indonesia. Each map contains information on its specificat
Insect Mouthparts
This Web site contains a pictorial guide to insect mouthparts, a complicated topic served well by this simple yet effective tutorial. Created by University of Ottawa entomology professor Dr. Houseman -- using material adapted from Digital Zoology (on CD from McGraw-Hill) -- this site provides labeled diagrams and high quality photos of chewing, siphoning, piercing, sponging, and combination mouthparts. Users may view images by category or click through the entire set in sequence. The photographs
Dan's Wild Wild Weather Page
Created by a meteorologist, this weather site is for students from 6 to 16 years old and their parents. Information and experiments are provided about radar, tornadoes, clouds, precipitation, lightning, humidity, satellites, temperature, forecasting, hurricanes, wind, and climate. While in the tornado section, students can click on any state on the map to get a hourly weather report, state forecast, zone forecast, short term forecast, forecast discussion, weather summary, public information, cli
Physicians for Social Responsibility: MercuryActionNOW
MercuryActionNOW is an "online resource created by Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR) to provide health care professionals and concerned citizens with information about the effects of mercury emissions on public health." The website is full of links to reports, fact sheets, letters, and other websites regarding mercury-related pollution and health issues. Examples include a downloadable Salmon Contaminant Factsheet; the Environmental Protection Agency's Mercury website; the CDC's Second
Ocean World: Coral Reefs
Texas A&M University presents Ocean World, a Web-based educational resource for oceanography. The feature on coral reefs has the most direct life sciences application, with easy-to-navigate sections about the coral animal, coral reefs as the rainforests of the sea, symbiosis, ecosystem services, and coral reef threats and conservation. The Web site also includes a handy hypertext glossary, an interactive quiz, and annotated links to interesting Web sites, including sites that provide real-time r
The Physics Classroom
Hosted by Study Works Online and written by science teacher Tom Henderson, The Physics Classroom is an online physics tutorial written for high school physics students. Through individual lessons and accompanying quizzes, this very informative site includes a physics tutorial that covers everything from Newton's Laws to Refraction. The Multimedia Physics Studio portion of the site gives excellent animations and movies that allow students to reinforce their learning by visualizing what is being d
Wolfram Research's Mathematical Functions
Wolfram Research, the maker of the popular software Mathematica, recently added a comprehensive database of mathematical functions to its Web site. Currently, there are over 37,000 formulas that can be browsed alphabetically or divided into fourteen categories. Documents explaining general identities and notations used on the site are also available; however, users must sign the guestbook before they can be viewed. Wolfram Research hopes eventually to add a history section for many of the functi
MSRI: Streaming Video - Fall 2002
The Mathematical Sciences Research Institute (MSRI) maintains an impressive archive of streaming video lectures and presentations. This site contains all of the videos from various workshops and special topics held in fall 2002. Of particular interest is the "Introductory Workshop in Quantum Computation." It consists of fifteen lectures, each with complete textual slides provided in addition to the roughly hour-long presentations. Quantum computation is a science that is still in its infancy, an
ChimpanZoo
"A collective effort between the Jane Goodall Institute, zoological facilities, and universities," ChimpanZoo is a research and education program that aims to "apply uniform research methods to learn more about chimpanzees and their psychological and behavioral responses to a captive environment." The program involves participating zoos, researchers, and volunteers collecting and submitting chimpanzee behavior data to the program. The site contains a great deal of information on chimpanzee behav
Signal Compression Lab
The Signal Compression Lab (SCL) is a part of the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at the University of California, Santa Barbara. "Current research activities at SCL include low bit rate speech coding, wideband speech and audio compression, speech modeling and synthesis," and many more focus areas involving data compression of various forms of media. A large collection of informative demonstrations and slide presentations illustrate the group's work. Many of the SCL staff have pub
USGS: National Geochemical Survey Database
The USGS's National Geochemical Survey (NGS) is producing "a body of geochemical data for the United States based primarily on stream sediments, analyzed using a consistent set of methods." After learning the history and background of the project, users can access the NGS data by geographic area. The website allows researchers to compare the analytical methods and view national maps illustrating the distribution of these methods for each element. Visitors can easily view maps of the distribution
WebElements: Periodic Table Scholar Edition
Billed as the first periodic table on the World Wide Web, WebElements: Periodic Table Scholar Edition is authored by Mark Winter of the University of Sheffield, England. Although many similar online periodic tables can be found, this offering is unique in that the material is presented in a light hearted and interesting way. The main page contains the table and all the common associated information, but each individual element, when clicked, contains a wealth of additional facts including variou
Igneous, Metamorphic, and Sedimentary Rock Info
Igneous, Metamorphic, and Sedimentary Rock Info, is part of the University of British Columbia Introduction to Petrology course Web site. Visitors can learn the basics of petrology, and the specifics about each individual rock type. For example, the sedimentary rock page gives definitions, normal constituents, limestone and dolostone facts, and siliciclastic rock information. One of the highlights of the site lets users go through the process of rock classification by determining its grain size,
Soap and Bubbles
The first Web site, from The Soap and Detergent Association, is called Soaps and Detergents (1). Visitors learn about the chemistry of soap and detergent, their history, how they're manufactured, and more. The easily read text and fun illustrations make this site a great place to start for this topic. The next site, called Bubble Engineering (2), is provided by Bubble Town. The page describes the physics of a cone-shaped bubble blowing device and how its shape reduces the velocity of air being b
Physics and Star Trek
Created and maintained by physicist Jason Hinson, the Physics and Star Trek Web site investigates faster than light travel and subspace physics. Each topic is presented as a mix of factual information along with speculation on the author's part on how these phenomena could or could not work. Although the site consists of much text and few graphics, which may turn away some potential readers, the interesting subject will definitely appeal to hard core Star Trek or physics junkies.
Natural Selection
A common criticism of natural selection is: How can it produce novel complex useful structures by pure random chance? Darwin argued that selection is not a random process, and furthermore, it is cumulative. This lesson provides a way for students to actually compare the cumulative non-random selection of Darwin with the non-cumulative version so often erroneously implied. Students attempt to produce a full sequence of 13 cards of one suit (ace - to king). This must be done by shuffling the suit
Computer Architecture Tutorial
Students in computer science or engineering will find this tutorial on computer architecture very useful and enlightening. Contributed by Professor Prabhu at Iowa State University, the material covers beginning and intermediate topics. Beginning with an overview of basic theorems, like Amdahl's Law, Prabhu explains the most important considerations for processor performance. He then goes into more details of a computer's operation, with a particular emphasis on memory hierarchy. This constitutes
History of Energy
This latest Topic in Depth delves in the Web�s offerings on the history of energy. The first site is maintained by the US Department of Energy, which is called Milestones in the History of Energy and Its Uses (1). From fire to the discovery of nuclear energy, the site gives short descriptions on significant events in the history of energy for each century, events by particular fuel type, events by energy uses, how energy uses have changed, energy consumption changes, and more. The next site
National Environmental Data Index
The National Environmental Data Index is maintained by the National Atmospheric and Oceanic Administration Environmental Information Service. The service provides a full text search of information from twelve governmental agencies including the US Department of Agriculture, Department of Energy, Department of Interior, Environmental Protection Agency, and NASA. Users can choose to search from all or individual agencies, by type of information, and by several specific subjects. Results display th
