On the morning of December 26, 2004, many coastal residents of northwestern Sumatra were startled as water at the shore dramatically receded below the normal low-water mark, leaving fish flapping on the exposed beach. The people drawn closer to the coast by this remarkable sight surely didn’t know how to explain the water’s bizarre behavior. Yet even in the early hours of the tsunami disaster, scientists began to grasp what was happening. In the following days, using maps of the seafloor and seismic data, tsunami researchers produced remarkably accurate computer simulations of the monstrous series of waves that took hundreds of thousands of lives.

In this interactive, examine some of these models and other graphics that reveal details of the tsunami from its initial generation in deep water to its deadly collision with coasts around the Indian Ocean.

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FunBrain is the Internet’s premier location for interactive, educational games (math, grammar, science) for children and kids of all ages.

This is a really fun site. You will find activities and games that teach Art, Geography, History, Languages, Math, Music. Science, and Technology. Each activity includes instructions, explanations, and illustrations. In addition to the classic games there is a section for kids under six to play with their parents, Web Books, and Entertainment Center and an arcade just for fun.

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Low Life Labs was created by the Learning Technologies Center at The Science Museum of Minnesota! Low Life Labs is an imaginary environment where cockroaches, ants, and similar creatures are studied. Robots are then built using the knowledge gleaned from these creature’s natural adaptations to their environment.

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Science Toys has loads of cool toys you can make at home with common household materials, often in only a few minutes, that demonstrate fascinating scientific principles.

To make it easier to build some of the toys, they have a catalog of parts and kits that you can buy online.

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At iKnowthat.com, the goal is to help children discover the magic — and power — of lifelong learning skills.

An active learner will develop meta-learning skills, a resourcefulness that will enable him or her to learn how to learn — rather than to simply memorize facts — for life.

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This site provides a free physics textbook written for the curious: it is entertaining, surprising and challenging on every page. With little mathematics, starting from observations of everyday life, the text explores the most fascinating parts of mechanics, thermodynamics, special and general relativity, electrodynamics, quantum theory and modern attempts at unification. The essence of these fields is summarized in the most simple terms. For example, the text presents modern physics as consequence of the notions of minimum entropy, maximum speed, maximum force, minimum change of charge and minimum action.

To enjoy curiosity even more, for each field of physics, the text presents the latest research results, the best animations, the best images, the most interesting physical puzzles and the most telling physical curiosities. It includes more than 500 animations and illustrations, 90 tables and 1600 challenges and puzzles.

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Enter the chemical battlefield with Elementeo, a game of chemistry. Two strong wills fighting against each other in a midst of an epic chemical battle, constantly trying to reduce their opponent’s IQ to ZERO. Armed with their arsenal of elements, compounds, and nuclear reactions, these chemists strive to create, combat, and conquer the world!

With every move, they try to cross the battlefield of nuclear reactions and enter their opponent’s electro-magnetic field. If they are successful, they attack and reduce their opponent’s IQ.

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The Howard Hughes Medical Institute invites curious kids to explore biology…on screen, off screen, and in between. The goal of this project is simple: to help your child appreciate science.

The Cool Science for Curious Kids Project looked at some of the best science projects from some of the best museums in the United States, then adapted them for the Web. Some of these activities are entirely electronic. Your child will do everything on screen. Others require you to go to your kitchen or backyard. They are designed for students in kindergarten through second or third grade.

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Science News for Kids is a Web site devoted to science news for children of ages 9 to 14.

Their goal is to offer timely items of interest to kids, accompanied by suggestions for hands-on activities, books, articles, Web resources, and other useful materials.

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The Tree of Life Web Project is a collection of information about biodiversity compiled collaboratively by hundreds of expert and amateur contributors. Its goal is to contain a page with pictures, text, and other information for every species and for each group of organisms, living or extinct. Connections between Tree of Life web pages follow phylogenetic branching patterns between groups of organisms, so visitors can browse the hierarchy of life and learn about phylogeny and evolution as well as the characteristics of individual groups.

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