83rd Annual

Sunday, 9 February 2003
Weathering the middle-school years: Using Web technology to make meteorology cool
Diane K. Fisher, NASA/JPL, Pasadena, CA; and P. Everson and N. J. Leon
SciJinks (scijinks.nasa.gov) is a new Web site built by NASA in collaboration with NOAA, operators of the GOES. SciJinks targets middle-school age children, their parents, and their teachers by presenting highly interactive games and virtual demonstrations of science and technology. Although SciJinks hopes to ultimately cover a broad spectrum of GOES-related topics, its first phase focuses on weather. The SciJinks Weather Laboratory presents weather as a complex, exciting topic that has colored human history and still offers many scientific and technological challenges. Visitors can run the "Bad Weather Joke Machine," and submit their own joke candidates, see weather movies and read "documentaries" at the GOES MoviePlex, write weather "ad-lib" stories, take weather quizzes, and travel the world of weather folklore. They can learn how the GOES geostationary orbits work and get ideas for weather-related science fair projects. They can learn how to prepare for weather disasters and help others if a disaster should strike their region.

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