Keystone Weekly
volume 4, issue 21        March 17, 2003

This week's Key Points: *Web Pick of the Week* and *Awesome Science!*
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Following up from last week, where we featured Niki Donato's solar system curriculum that integrates readings from The Magic School Bus books, it seems appropriate to turn attention to the excellent Magic School Bus website. The Magic School Bus websites and television show are aimed at children ages 6 though 9, but you might find some flexibility there in the appeal factor among your students.

Dive into this site anywhere, and you'll be impressed with the volume and quality of colorful and easy-to-navigate resources. There are activities created for teachers specifically to help engage students in hands-on learning, with topics such as "Baked in a Cake: Chemistry," "Butterfly and the Bog Beast: Butterflies," and "Flexes Its Muscles: Body Mechanics." And there are plenty of ways that students could roam around the site themselves to learn and play. Tours of places and science concepts, weekly experiments, and games abound. This site would be great to be bookmarked on school computers, if it's not already.

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Some people have a difficult time imagining the scope of the universe, picturing it spreading infinitely in all directions. But is it any easier to grasp the notion of a doughnut shaped universe? Recent hints from space may be suggesting just such a thing.

As commented in the above article:
"Rather than being infinite in all directions, as the most fashionable theory suggests, the universe could be radically smaller in one direction than the others. As a result it may be even be shaped like a doughnut."

Find out more about this latest hypothesis above. (Free site registration required.)

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This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 9819641.
Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

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