Crayon Physics

I've been wanting a tablet PC for a while now, and this game (page currently lagging) only reinforces it. In case the page won't load, here's a review of it, and below is a demo.



I've seen tools like these accompanying textbooks before, but unfortunately never had one with a book that I chose. I should write to a few publishers to see if they have demos I can download. Unlike this "game" version, they're generally designed to accompany a Physics I course, so students can explore physical situations without friction, or so that students can perform online labs. (I'm curious about doing online labs and wish to explore the possibilities, but I will take a lot of convincing before I'm willing to do it.)

Google Sky

Latest from Google Earth is Google Sky. If you download the Google Earth program, you now have the option to view the sky instead of just the Earth. The images for the sky come from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), the Palomar Observatory, and the Hubble Space Telescope. The video demo of the sky aspect looks really promising, and I'm in the process of downloading installing it right now (yay Mac version!).

I can't wait until they *really* get with it and include not only visual wavelengths (as SDSS, Palomar, and the HST all are), but also start including IR (such as IRAS and 2MASS) and radio and microwave (like COBE), and so on. All wavelengths are crucial to astronomy, not just what our eyes can see.

Meanwhile, I'm waiting for the makers of TheSky to sue Google over the name. And if you want a head slapper, find Sally Ride's mistake.