Science Courses and Tutorials

Vega is a not for profit trust which broadcasts science programmes for free over the internet. Our programmes feature experts in science and engineering and many are or have in the past been broadcast on mainstream television.

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This applet demonstrates an artificial chemistry. Each circle is an atom, that floats around and can become bonded to others to form a molecule. The reason for using a strange abstraction of chemistry like this is that you can do some really cool things in a simple system. The applet above takes you through some of the possibilities. Perhaps the coolest thing you can do is template replication - the process DNA uses to make copies of itself. If you choose the right rules in the applet above you can actually get this working - follow through the challenges to find out how.

ScienceMaster is the Internet's science learning web site, for students, parents and teachers. We offer a friendly environment to support public & private school science education and home learning. ScienceMaster is chock full of information, news, links, pictures, products and services, with the best content from NASA, the USGS, the EPA, NOAA & leading colleges & universities. ScienceMaster is the place to learn about the universe, or space, find information on volcanos, and global warming, explore plants, animals or microbes, and study physics or chemistry.

This site contains tutorial materials, worked and practice problems, and online assessments, using multimedia images/movies etc. to enhance and facilitate learning (e.g. Chime images, mechanism movies etc.).

This site contains links to a large array of physics and astronomy resources including online textbolicoks and free software and web-based applications such as Planet Finder, an applet for finding planets in the night sky, and BinoSky, a guie to the night sky through binoculars.

How does a rainbow form? Is levitation possible? Do time machines exist? What does 'quantum' mean? This site publishes a free physics textbook that tells the story of how it became possible, after 2500 years of exploration, to answer such questions. The text explores the limits of time and space, and the wonders that can be discovered there. Written in English, its over 1200 pages are provided for students, teachers, and for anybody who is interested in the precise description of nature. For each field of physics, the latest research results, the most interesting physical puzzles and the most telling physical curiosities are presented. Over 680 solved challenges and 510 figures, photographs and tables are included.

The back of the envelope is fundamentally about scale. If details were always crucial, if everything was always a close call, everything about the same size, lots of explanations similarly plausible, then there would be no back of the envelope. Its approximation and estimation would not work. But instead the universe has a broad breadth of scale. There is both the very big, and the very small. Often along side each other, providing contrasts so dramatic, that blurring the pieces doesn't change the picture. Explanations, seemingly plausible, that a moment's rough reflection reveals are not even close to fitting. The rough is often sufficient, and should always be the prelude to worrying about detail.

Water seems, at first sight, to be a very simple molecule, consisting of just two hydrogen atoms attached to an oxygen atom. Indeed, there are very few molecules that are smaller or lighter. The size of the water molecule, however, belies the complexity of its actions and its singular capabilities. Water's unique properties seem to fit ideally into the requirements for life as can no other molecule. A number of explanations of the complex behavior of liquid water have been published, many quite recently, with several stirring up great controversy. In this site, I have attempted to present these ideas in a self-consistent manner, which I hope will encourage both its understanding and further work.

During the last two weeks of January 1975 Buckminster Fuller gave an extraordinary series of lectures concerning his entire lifes work. These thinking out loud lectures span 42 hours and examine in depth all of Fuller's major inventions and discoveries from the 1927 Dymaxion house, car and bathroom, through the Wichita House, geodesic domes, and tensegrity structures, as well as the contents of Synergetics. Autobiographical in parts, Fuller recounts his own personal history in the context of the history of science and industrialization. The stories behind his Dymaxion car, geodesic domes, World Game and integration of science and humanism are lucidly communicated with continuous reference to his synergetic geometry. Permeating the entire series is his unique comprehensive design approach to solving the problems of the world. Some of the topics Fuller covered in this wide ranging discourse include: architecture, design, philosophy, education, mathematics, geometry, cartography, economics, history, structure, industry, housing and engineering.

Fun, interactive simulations of physical phenomena that make bridges to the real world, from the Physics Education Technology project at the University of Colorado. The simulations can be run directly from this site (click here), or downloaded to your computer for off-line use (click here).

The Simpsons has established itself as an award-winning international pop culture phenomenon. It is the longest-running sitcom of all time and it is also one of the most literate television programs on the air, containing many references to subject matter and scholars from various academic fields, including mathematics. Since The Simpsons has been airing in prime-time for most of our students' lives, they likely are familiar with the program and its large cast of characters, including a resident mathematician. The Simpsons also contains over a hundred instances of mathematics ranging from arithmetic to geometry to calculus, many designed to expose and poke fun at innumeracy. In fact, Al Jean, Executive Producer and head writer, has a bachelor's degree in mathematics from Harvard University. Several episodes of The Simpsons contain significant mathematics that relates to material we normally cover in our classes. For these reasons, this program is an ideal source of fun ways to introduce important concepts to students, and to reduce math anxiety and motivate students in courses for non-majors.

The BioClip is a free standing multimedia document. It mixes texts and/or commentaries, music, sounds, videos and animations with fluidity such that a non specialist can understand the background, the context, meaning and perspectives of each discovery and story. The objective of the BioClip Project is to encourage the creation, exchange and distribution of multimedia documents about life sciences and more specifically the cell.

More than 30 Federal agencies formed a working group in 1997 to make hundreds of Federally supported teaching and learning resources easier to find. The result of that work is the FREE web site. Each month we add new teaching and learning resources from Federal agencies. Topics cover arts, educational technology, foreign languages, health and safety, language arts, mathematics, physical education, science, social studies, and vocational education.

ResearchChannel is a consortium of research universities and corporate research divisions dedicated to broadening the access to and appreciation of our individual and collective activities, ideas, and opportunities in basic and applied research. One of the major goals of ResearchChannel is to use program content creation and manipulation processes as testing medium for analog and digital broadcast and on-demand multimedia offerings, thus providing an unusual opportunity to experiment with new methods of distribution and interaction on a global basis.

Naturalgas.org is presented as an educational website covering a variety of topics related to the natural gas industry. The purpose of this website is to provide visitors with a comprehensive information source for topics related to natural gas, and present an unbiased learning tool for students, teachers, industry, media, and government. This site has been developed and is maintained by the Natural Gas Supply Association.

IN 1999, legendary theoretical physicist Hans Bethe delivered three lectures on quantum theory to his neighbors at the Kendal of Ithaca retirement community (near Cornell University). Given by Professor Bethe at age 93, the lectures are presented here as QuickTime videos synchronized with slides of his talking points and archival material. ntended for an audience of Professor Bethe's neighbors at Kendal, the lectures hold appeal for experts and non-experts alike. The presentation makes use of limited mathematics while focusing on the personal and historical perspectives of one of the principal architects of quantum theory whose career in physics spans 75 years.

The U.S. Geological Survey provides scientific information intended to help educate the public about natural resources, natural hazards, geospatial data, and issues that affect our quality of life. This website provides links to selected online resources to support education (K-12) and college inquiry and research.

This website presents data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, a project to make a map of a large part of the universe. We would like to show you the beauty of the universe, and share with you our excitement as we build the largest map in the history of the world.

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