Included are suggestions on how you might use the links for extra practice beyond the classroom. The sites offer a real-world environment in which to solve problems. Like the real world, you may have to weed through lots of information that, though interesting, might not be useful to solving the particular problem.

Space exploration and astronomy:

The first three sites have detailed information about space exploration. For example, the site about space shuttles has a breakdown of the propellant mixture in the solid rocket boosters as a percent by weight. Try to find those percentages and the weight of the propellant in each rocket booster, then calculate the amount of each substance in the propellant mixture.

NASA Human Space Flight Web. This site has lots of pictures and information about current missions and the space program. http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/sitemap/index.html

This site has detailed information about the space shuttles. Visit this site for more information about the shuttle after you have worked on Problem 84 on p. 436 in the text. http://www.ksc.nasa.gov/shuttle/technology/sts-newsref/stsref-toc.html

About Apollo 11...the first trip to the moon. This site has a detailed log of the first manned trip to the moon. It also has scripted dialogue between mission control and the astronauts and film clips from the mission. This would be a great site to visit after working Problem 17 on p. 139 in the text. http://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/a11/a11.html

This is an astronomy site that contains a wealth of information on planets, the sun, stars, galaxies, meteors, etc. It also has links to actual data from satellites that you could use to create graphs or find means, medians, and modes. There is also a link to a discussion of planetary alignments, which you might want to look at after you have had a chance to work on the puzzle problem on p. 342 in the text. http://www.sunspot.noao.edu/PR/

Architecture

These sites offer wonderful information about the tallest buildings. Create a bar graph of the heights of the buildings that became the tallest of their time with the year in which they became the tallest structure along the horizontal axis. You could begin with the Great Pyramid at Giza and continue from there.

This site has general information about skyscrapers. http://www.skyscraper.org/

Everything you wanted to know about the Empire State building. You might take a look at this site after working through Problem 21 on p. 140 in the text. http://www.esbnyc.com/html/facts.html

Everything you might want to know about the Statue of Liberty. http://www.nps.gov/stli/prod02.htm

Archeology and history

You might use these sites to research and suggest theories on how such enormous and complex structures could be built without the use of modern machinery.

This is an interactive site that allows you to do a virtual tour of the pyramids of Egypt. This would be a great site to visit after the Puzzle Problem on p. 364. There is an excellent interview with archeologist Mark Lehner under Who built the pyramids? Lehner talks through his estimate of the number of people involved in building the great pyramid. His estimate would be excellent to read after reading about and/or discussing estimation in Section 1.4. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/pyramid/explore/

Lots of pictures and information on Ziggurats. This would be a great site to visit after Problem 20 on p. 74 in the text. http://www.crystalinks.com/ziggurat.html

This site is about the Seven Wonders of the ancient world. http://ce.eng.usf.edu/pharos/wonders/

Math and Science

This site has links to math and science sites. http://blakkat.com/science.htm

These sites by NOVA are about the proof of Fermat's last theorem. These sites would be excellent to visit after completing Section 4.1 and reading the Historical Note on p. 240 in the text. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/proof/wiles.html

and

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/proof/germain.html

This site is all about weights and measures. This is a superb site to create interesting conversion problems that expand the measurement portion of Chapter 7 in the text. http://home.clara.net/brianp/index.html

Medicine

WebMedLit. This site has lots of medical information. There are lots of actual medical studies with real data that could be used to further explore the statistics and graphing discussed in Chapter 9. http://webmedlit.silverplatter.com/index.html

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention home site. One part of the site, under In the news, is called Rumors/Hoaxes. There are brief discussions of health-related rumors and hoaxes that are currently circulating. Look at this site after you have read about the check procedure to perform a real-world check. In our world of vast amounts of information, checking and verifying information can be vital. http://www.cdc.gov/

World Health Organization home site. The reports at this site could be used for percent calculations, graphing, and/or mean, median, and mode problems. http://www.who.int/

National interests

National Debt Clock. This site shows the current national debt and breaks the debt into a per capita amount. This is a good site to visit after learning about integers in Chapter 2. What do you think of government finance practices after looking at this site? http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/

These last three sites contain table after table of statistics. Lots of analysis projects could be developed from these sites alone. You could write analysis reports on growth or create line graphs out of data and use the graphs to estimate future trends.

U.S. Census Bureau. This site has lots of interesting data about U.S. population. http://www.census.gov/

FEDSTATS (Federal statistics listings). This site is a global site of lots of Federal statistics. http://www.fedstats.gov/