The Eyes Have It Open your eyes and prepare to be dazzled at SandlotScience.com, home of the wildest optical illusions you've ever seen. Swing by www.SandlotScience.com to see strange illusions, camouflage, special effects and much more. Check out the bizarre geometry of the Crazy Crate, or send your eyeballs into a wild spin at the Rotating Spiral Illusion. Word lovers will enjoy the games at the Typography section where you can play with some tough ambigrams. And be sure to stop by the site's Ambiguous Illusions section, featuring 23 of these extraordinary visual gems, such as the Barber Pole Illusion and the Vanishing Area Paradox. Sandlotscience.com is truly an eye-catcher of a Web site. (Disclaimer: This site now contains advertisements.)
The Good Neighbor Policy Some people travel the world to help poor people in other countries. Pretty inspiring, huh? But you don't have to travel far to make a big difference in your community. Catch the volunteering bug at the Kids Next Door site at www.hud.gov/kids. You'll meet kids who care, just like you, with great ideas for how to help others. One girl got a group together to make quilts for homeless people. A church group, a school or one kid can make a difference. Check out the Kids Volunteer! links to find out how you can get involved in your own neighborhood. You can help build a house, make some new friends and make the world a better place. Kids Next Door is a great place to start. Time Bandits Journey through the past and discover the amazing evolution of time measurement. A Walk Through Time covers the major periods of this science, from ancient calendars to today's Internet time service. Travel to http://physics.nist.gov/GenInt/Time/time.html where time is always of the essence. You'll go back 20,000 years to ice-age Europe, when hunters marked the passage of the days with sticks and bones. The site also profiles the incredible calendars from the ancient Egyptians, Babylonians and Aztecs. Check out some of the earliest clocks known, from the Egyptian shadow clock to the water clocks of Greece. Then keep time with information ranging from sun dials to quartz clock operation to the "Atomic Age" of time standards, when precise time-keeping became the norm. Finally, learn about the World's Time Zones, which came into play in the 1800s because of railway travel. A Walk Through Time is your ultimate guide to the evolution of timekeeping.
1. Name one thing you can do to help the homeless.
Dear Amy: I need help with my chemistry. --John, Indianapolis Dear John: I always need help with chemistry, too. The Web is such a great resource that help is always just a click or two away. I found a neat JavaScript-driven Periodic Table of Elements at http://le-village.ifrance. com/okapi/periodic3.htm. When you scroll over the names, the information shows up in text boxes, and when you click on the element's abbreviation, a picture comes up in a separate box. I always wondered what uranium looked like. Have fun and keep studying. (This site is no longer available, but you can go to www.periodictable.com.)