Keystone Weekly
volume 4, issue 2        September 30, 2002

This week's Key Points: *Web Pick of the Week: New Curricular Companion,* *Rocketry Challenge,* and *Awesome Science!*
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The final Curricular Companion—Models and Designs—is now finished and available to aid your research. The Models and Designs Curricular Companion covers such diverse kits as Energy, Machines, and Motion (STC/MS), Ideas and Inventions (FOSS), Measuring Time (STC), Models and Designs (FOSS), Solar Energy (FOSS), Structures (Insights), and Technology of Paper (STC).

This new Companion offers interesting information for browsing even if you're not working with any of the above kits. Within the Companion, you'll find information on how solar power works when the sun isn't shining; how ancient people learned to chart and measure time; and how to make your own paper. Take a peek, and keep it in mind when you're creating lessons that relate to the above kit topics.

Now that all of the Curricular Companions are complete, we invite you to take a new look at this page to get a full sense of the range of topics that the Companions cover:
http://www. keystone.fi.edu/matrix1.shtml

But the Companions are never *truly* finished—keep sending us interesting websites and ideas, and they'll change and improve over time!

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Feeling creative? Team America Rocketry Challenge is the first national model rocket competition open to junior high school students partnered with a high school team.

The challenge is to design, build, and fly a model rocket carrying two raw eggs as close as possible to 1,500 feet. The top 100 teams will compete in a fly-off in Northern Virginia in May 2003.

Five winning student teams will share a total prize pool of $59,000. Three of the top ten teams are eligible to win $2,500 grants, including travel expenses, to launch an advanced rocket with NASA, and attend Space Camp. Each of the top 25 teams' schools will be invited to send one teacher on an all expenses paid trip to attend an advanced NASA rocketry workshop, meet with NASA scientists and engineers, and tour the Marshall Space Flight Center.

This event is sponsored by the Aerospace Industries Association and the National Association of Rocketry. The partners include NASA, the US Air Force and numerous educational organizations.

The deadline to enter the contest is November 15, 2002.

For inspiration, take a look at Bill Turner's photoessay, in which he chronicled his third grade class's experiences with creating their own rockets.
http://www.keystone.fi.edu/visits/billturnerrocket.shtml

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Salamanders possess the ability to regrow severed limbs, and scientists are hoping to unlock their secrets and find out if this could help humans regrow cells, skin, organs, and limbs themselves. A few other creatures have demonstrated this skill, and scientists are hopeful that they're closer to understanding why, thanks to more specialized genetic research. This article from the New York Times Online tracks and explains the strands of current research on this topic.

(Free registration is required to read the article.)

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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.

webteam@keystone.fi.edu

© 2003. All rights reserved.