Return to this week's Bulletin

28 September 2001

Letters

Cheap Books

Sheldon,

I enjoyed your article "An Impoverished Amateur's Library". Another source that I have "mined" successfully is local thrift stores of towns which have nearby colleges or universities.

warm regards,

Charles

 

Dumpster Diving Revisited

Hi Sheldon,

It all depends on the dumpster. This year I acquired the entire high vac system off an electron beam microscope, and on a later trip a 15" (Zeiss) telescope mirror.... University dumpsters are VERY rewarding ! Perhaps we should have a dumpster challenge column ?

Also worth linking to http://www.surplusshed.com on your side of the pond for optical surplus items. and http://rswww.com and http://www.farnell.com , both major electronics and mechanical parts people on my side of the pond.

Best wishes

Steve Taylor

 

SAS STAR Network

Hello Shawn,

How can I find out if there are any people in my community who are interested in bringing an observatory to a local school? I live in Newport News, Virginia. What would I need to do to form such a group, or try to bring it to the school board, etc? Do you have information I could use, or are there people that could come and help? We have a local planetarium with a small telescope at the Virginia Living Museum. Do you know if anyone there is involved in STAR? I'm a bit of a wannabe amature stargazer myself, and have wanted to build an instrument for a long time. I have a mirror and some other equipment, but never have put the project together. So, I have a little bit of hands-on knowledge, for what it's worth.

I'd appreciate any information you can give me.

Keith Welch

 

Dear Shawn,

Saltfleet High School in Stoney Creek, Ontario was recently built with an observatory attached.

Cheers,

Doug Welch

 

Hi Shawn,

There is a place for hyperbole, in advertising and marketing, but not science. A 16 " scope is not world-class or cutting edge or state of the art; I have a 16" scope!

http://www.sas.org/STARNetwork/STARNetwork.html Research in the title is spelt wrongly.

Regards,

Steve Taylor

 

Starting a Club

I'm thinking of starting an amateur science club in our small town in the foothills of the Sierra mountains. It seems to me like SAS was interested or still is interested in creating such groups as part of SAS. Can you tell me more about it?

Wayne T. Watson

 

An Information Resource

Shawn, Nancy,

I have no idea how I come to be on your list (put it down to faulty memory on my part), but I am delighted to be there. More importantly, I may be of some service to you.

1. I have a site drawing more than 2000 visitors a day, all looking for science project ideas, and i will happily link from there (a link back is nice, but not a condition or precondition)

2. I write the science content for WebsterWorld, an encyclopedia system.We are Australian, but reach the world. We cover all science and technology in our material. The science content will also be in our e-books, which we plan to bring out in Microsoft Reader's .lit format, and selected "hand-held" formats. We are now on the Web on a subscription basis at www.websterworld.com

We expect our material to be useful as a way of introducing modern science content and ideas to lay readers, but more importantly, into educational settings, where science discoveries usually take 30 years to reach the classroom.

Our CD and online formats introduce many more cross-links to previous science news stories, and also to background entries within the knowledge-base. I choose the stories, based on the freshness of the content, the sweetness of the science, and the opportunities they offer to illustrate particular scientific principles and ideas.

3. I edit "The Communicator", the newsletter of the Australian Science Communicators.

It is up to you to work out how to get benefit from that -- but i am remarkably willing :-)

Peter Macinnis