Paragraphs describing my additional links are in RED
A lot of the equipment is pretty expensive for educational purposes at the middle school level, but would definitely come in handy at the college level. High schools could use some of it also.
Earthday Footprint Quiz www.earthday.net/footprint/
This "quiz" is actually a calculator that figures out how much of the world's resources you use as an individual. It gives the final answer in terms of how many acres of the world you use to survive, and also how many Earths would be necessary to support the world's population if everyone used as many resources as you do.
Newtonian Mountain galileoandeinstein.physics.virginia.edu
This applet allows the user to visualize the interaction between the Earth's gravity and a ball that's thrown horizontally from the top of a mountain. Students can see that as the ball moves outward, it also falls toward the ground. This is what allows an object to orbit the earth. The user can change the velocity of the ball to see different or partial orbits. High velocities can also allow the ball to escape earth's gravity.
Lunch Savings Calculator www.dinkytown.net/java/LunchSaver.html
Since my curriculum is middle school math, I tried to look at OnLine tools that can be used for math classes. the Lunch Savings calculator is a tool that students can use to determine how much money they would have if they save part of their lunch money by bringing lunch instead of buying it. This would be a good introduction into a lesson where students use a spreadsheet to produce a similar tool, such as a chart that shows how interest in calculated when it compounds daily, weekly or monthly.
Universal Currency Converter www.xe.com/ucc/
The Universal Currency Converter would make a good introduction into unit rates, again for a math class. In this case the unit rates are all values of international currency. Students can figure out how many english pounds they would have if they brought a certain amount of U.S. Dollars to England, and then convert Pounds to Euros to see how much they would have on the European continent.
Roller Coaster Applet www.funderstanding.com/k12/coaster/
The physicist in me likes this applet that allows students to test the function of a roller coaster. STudents can change the height of the hills and the loop-the-loop, or change gravity or friction, to see how it affects the rollercoaster ride. Question mark buttons have explanations of physical properties, such as mass and velocity, to explain how the changes work.
Math Forum: Exploring Data http://mathforum.org/workshops/usi/dataproject/
Again this site is useful for a math curriculum. It contains data based projects that are broken down by grade level, and cross referenced to 1989 math standards. The standards may not be up to date, but the projects are all still quite useful. The data and instructions provided allow students to use spreadsheets to create graphs. There are discussion questions to enhance learning. There are also links to other sources of data. All of the links appear to work.
Graphing in the Information Age http://www.statcan.ca/english/kits/graph.htm
Similar to the Exploring Data wegbsite above, this site provides data that students can use to create graphs using a spreadsheet. The projects are designed to help students understand the advantages of different kinds of graphs, and to choose the best kids of graph to use when displaying different kinds of data.
Look Who's Footing the Bill! QuickQuest http://www.kn.pacbell.com/wired/democracy/quickquest.html
This webquest style project mixes math with social studies, and asks the question: "Is having a $5 trillion national debt a problem? Why or why not?" Specific step by step instructions lead the students through a process where they can decide for themselves just what it means to have a national debt as large as the U.S.