Multimedia Friday: Einstein, DNA, and Tube Worms

Einstein "Enlightening Ideas": In this animated video, Einstein explains his special theory of relativity. Interactive animations allow the user to assimilate the concepts underlying this theory.

Linus Pauling and the Race for DNA: The Valley Library at Oregon State University contains over 800 scanned documents, photographs, audio clips, and videos about the discovery of DNA. Watch scientific luminaries Francis Crick, James Watson, Linus Pauling, and Maurice Wilkins describe their roles in the race for the discovery of the double helix structure of DNA. James Watson admits that early on "DNA was a word. It never meant anything as a molecule to me, and I knew it was composed of nucleotides. But again, except for an exam, I never would have learned what the formula was."

Dive and Discover Return to the Galapagos Rift: Dive and Discover is a multimedia site hosted by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution that is designed to immerse you in deep seafloor expeditions to study deep sea vents and fauna. In the most recently profiled expedition, Return to the Galapagos Rise, researchers use the submarine Alvin to study organisms that live off of heat and gases that rise out of the Galapagos Spreading Center in the Pacific Ocean. The site contains video clips from each expedition, such as the one shown at right, in which Alvin divers spotted an octopus.