The Scientific Toolbox

Science News for Kids is a:

“Web site devoted to science news for children of ages 9 to 13. [Their] goal is to offer timely items of interest to kids, accompanied by suggestions for hands-on activities, books, articles, Web resources, and other useful materials.”

This week, the site features articles on topics as diverse as mosquitoes and how monkey’s perceive color. You can search the article archives by topic using the links on the left of the screen (or by using the search window in the top right hand corner of the screen) or by week.

Check out the PuzzleZone, GameZone and LabZone for weekly science-themed puzzles, games and activities. The SciFiZone offers recommendations for Science Fiction. Check out the ScienceFairZone for “science fair tips, topics, news, student profiles, winning projects, and more.” There is even a TeacherZone with “science materials and resources for teachers and parents.”

(discovered via Ms. Frizzle’s blog)

At Joey Green Mad Scientist, you will find a plethora of science experiments that you can do with commonly found household ingredients. For example you can learn how to:

On the Playing With Time website (which I discovered via geekpress.com), you can see a variety of every day events occuring either faster or slower than they usually do.

“Here at the Playing With Time web site, unseen worlds of change will be revealed. You will see time sped up and slowed down, and behold the beauty of change. Time will be in your hands to witness, replay, and even create. You never know… you might not look at things quite the same way again.”

The Playing With Time project actually consists of two parts: the website and a museum exhibit. The exhibit is currently in St. Paul, Minnesota and will continue travel around the country until 2009.

via Alan Boyle’s Cosmic Log:

“Turn science into child’s play: Sally Ride, the first American woman to go into space, has had her share of somber duties as a member of the investigative boards for the Challenger explosion as well as the Columbia tragedy. But she also is involved in happier chores, such as helping with the second annual TOYchallenge.”

“TOYchallenge gives students in grades five through eight the opportunity to exercise their skills in science, engineering and design by coming up with new ideas for games and toys. Ride created the contest, along with Hasbro Inc. and Domenico Grasso, director of Smith College’s Picker Engineering Program. The idea is to inspire young people — and particularly girls — to pursue careers in science and engineering.”

“The registration deadline for this year’s competition is Feb. 16. Design teams, consisting of kids in grades five through eight plus an adult coach, can work on a project in one of seven categories, leading up to regional and national showcases. But don’t dally: The written project proposal has to be submitted by March 1. The top prizes include a trip to space camp and personalized action figures. “

Check out the guidelines and the contest timeline on the TOYchallenge website.

I found the PathFinder Science web site while surfing the web. Their tagline is “creating student scientists, not just science students.” What a great philosophy!! PathFinder Science is a national and international collaboration of teachers and students from over 1,000 registered classrooms in 21 differnt countries. The classrooms share data and work together in order to answer questions about our world. Collaborative projects include:

The Molecular Expressions Web site at Florida State University has a really cool interactive java tutorial to help get across the concept of orders of magnitude in relation to the relative size of objects in our world and universe:

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.

In addition, this site has a plethora of information on microscopy, including a microscopy primer, a miscroscopy museum, a photo gallery and even a list of web resources. You an even try virtual microscopy with interactive java tutorials. For example, you can use scanning electron microscopy to get an up close look at a jellyfish or a gecko’s foot under the microscope.

You can help solve major science problems while your computer’s idling! While exploring the science library at Planet Science, I found links to the following sites where you can download free software that will put your computer to work while it is idling:

Fight Aids at Home:  Download a program to help with AIDS research.

Folding Proteins Experiment:  Help by using your PC to solve the protein folding conundrum.

Compute Against Cancer:  Explains in great detail how it goes about utilizing your computer to work on cancer calculations.

Numbers and Codes:  Use your computer to help crack cyphers and mathematical problems.

How do these programs work? To give you one example, FightAIDS@Home, “processes information (in this case using the drug design software AutoDock) and evaluates prospective candidates for drug discovery…when your computer has finished a FightAIDS@Home computation, the FightAIDS@Home results are packed up and sent back to The Scripps Research Institute, ready for Scripps researchers to collect and analyze them.“

Many of you are probably already familiar with Bill Nye (the Science Guy). His popular TV show was broadcast on public television from 1992-1998. His web site (which requires Macromedia Flash Player 6) has a number of different experiments that you can do at home. First, click on “home demos”. Next, choose the subject you are most interested in. Then choose the experiment you would like to try. Printer-friendly versions of each experiment are available as well.

Note: Collections of “Bill Nye the Science Guy” episodes are availabe on VHS video, but they are listed as “out of stock” at many on-line retailers. However, I was able to find used copies of many Bill Nye videos at Amazon.com and Half.com.