It lists Internet resources on science, scientists, and scientific investigations. Students learn about geometric patterns, and can create their own, through a page maintained by the Center for the Computation and Visualization of Geometric Structures, an NSF Science and Technology Center at the University of Minnesota. They can find plans to learn to build a seltzer tablet rocket from a page maintained by the Los Alamos National Laboratory, or they can find out more about James Lovell, the commander of the ill-fated Apollo 13 lunar mission. The electronic version of the magazine features several interactive articles and experiments. Students are challenged to design a tree of their own to survive in a particular niche.
Immediate feedback tells students how they've done.
FeederWatch data show how populations of winter birds are growing or shrinking, and how species distributions are changing. FeederWatch and many similar projects were discussed at an NSF-sponsored national conference in Washington, DC, last fall. The assessment tools were created to measure the effectiveness of programs in NSF's Local Systemic Change Initiative, but are available freely to other interested educators and any Internet user. NSF maintains a Web page that lists resources for teachers, primarily elementary school teachers, who are anxious to teach science but are unsure how to begin. Sonic Boom will be syndicated on Top-40 stations in at least 25 major demographic markets.