Chapter 1: Inheritance and selection

The Quagga Project

http://www.museums.org.za/sam/quagga/quagga.htm

This website was set up by Reinhold Rau and his team at the South African Museum. It gives lots of information about the quagga, the subspecies of zebra that became extinct in the late 1800s. This information includes the aim and history of the quagga project, news on how the project is proceeding and frequently asked questions about the project.


The story of the coelacanth

http://www.dinofish.com

This website provides a lot of information about the coelacanth, the ‘dinofish’ that was thought to be extinct, but which was rediscovered on 23 December 1938. The story of the discovery and identification of the fish by Marjorie Courtenay Latimer, the curator of a tiny museum in South Africa, makes fascinating reading. The site also includes some pictures of the coelacanth and some downloadable video clips.

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Chapter 2: Reactions of metals and the reactivity series

School Chemistry – The Reactivity Series

http://www.schoolchem.com/xcontent.htm

This website contains a number of sections on different subjects in Chemistry. The site is aimed at pupils taking GCSE Chemistry, so some of it is more than you will need to know now, but the section on the reactivity series is a nice summary of reactions of metals with oxygen, water and dilute acids. One thing to note is that the arrows in the equations haven’t come out properly – they look like this ±. Don’t worry about the section on Ionic Equations, this is something you will learn more about at GCSE.


WebElements – The Periodic Table

http://www.webelements.com

This site contains an interactive Periodic Table. You can click on any of the elements in the Table, and it leads you to lots of information about the element, including its uses, its properties, its compounds, its reactions and how it is isolated. There are a lot of bits of information about the element that you won’t need, so don’t worry about these.

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Chapter 3: Energy and electricity

The Centre for Alternative Technology

http://www.cat.org.uk

This is the website for the Centre for Alternative Technology in Wales – a charity devoted to investigating ways of living which don’t harm the environment. The site includes a virtual tour of the centre, details of how they started and what the charity aims to do. Some of the alternatives that the Centre is studying are wind and water power, solar heating and organic farming.

First Hydro Company – pumped storage power

http://www.fhc.co.uk

This website was set up by First Hydro Company – a company that runs pumped storage power stations. Information is given about two of the power stations – Ffestiniog and Dinorwig, including a virtual tour and details of how the environment has been protected in the building of the power stations.

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Chapter 4: Fit and healthy

ASH – Action on Smoking and Health

http://www.ash.org.uk

Many thousands of people die from smoking-related diseases in the UK every year. This is by far the single largest preventable cause of death. Tobacco also causes serious illness and is a major cause of poverty and health inequalities. ASH aims to preserve the health of the community; to advance the education of the public concerning smoking; to carry out or support research and communication for the benefit of public health.

ASH is working to secure public, media, parliamentary, local and national Government support for a comprehensive programme to tackle the epidemic of tobacco-related disease.


Institute of Alcohol Studies

http://www.ias.org.uk

IAS is an educational organisation, which aims to increase public understanding of the problems of alcohol use and abuse. The site contains a lot of useful information about alcohol, including facts and figures on drinking and driving, and the link between alcohol and crime.


Kids’ health

http://www.kidshealth.org

This is an American website set up to provide children with information about health. From the home page, you can search for whatever topic you are interested in - like drugs or alcohol - and you'll find lots of helpful information. Some of the spellings and the facts may be different because it's an American site. For example, under alcohol, the legal drinking age is given as 21, but in the UK, this age is 18.

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Chapter 5: Chemistry of the environment

Greenpeace – an environmental action group

http://www.greenpeace.org/~climate/

This address leads you to the climate section of the main Greenpeace website. The text is at quite a high level, but there is a lot of information there that you will be able to understand. From this main page, you can access information about topics like greenhouse gases, fossil fuels, El Nino and renewable energy.


Southampton University – environment information

http://www.envsci.soton.ac.uk/resources/links/links.htm

This website has been produced by the University for use in schools and contains a lot of information about different topics to do with the environment. From this main page, you can click on topics such as air pollution, global warming, acid rain and renewable energy sources.


Science Across the World – Global warming

http://www.scienceacross.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=content.showcontent&node=93

From the general Science Across the World website, this page is dedicated to the study of global warming, from its chemical causes to its wider environmental characteristics and consequences.

Chapter 6: Gravity and space

Space Telescope Science Institute – Hubble pictures

http://oposite.stsci.edu/pubinfo/

This is an excellent website for looking at pictures of space taken from the Hubble Telescope. You can look at the pictures by date or by subject area – such as stars, nearby galaxies and nebulae.

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Chapter 7: Plants, photosynthesis and food

Information about different types of fertilisers

http://www.tfi.org/

This site contains a lot of information about fertilisers, including details of what they contain, what the nutrients in the fertiliser actually do, and the different forms of fertiliser you can buy.


Biological Control Virtual Information Centre

http://cipm.ncsu.edu/ent/biocontrol/

Biological control is one alternative to using pesticides to kill pest species. It involves the use of another organism – maybe a predator or a parasite – to kill the pest species naturally. This website summarises how biological control works and gives some examples.


Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB)

http://www.rspb.org.uk

This address takes you to the main website of the Royal Society for the Protection Birds – an organisation which works to protect bird species and the environments in which they live.

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Chapter 8: Using chemistry

Wallace Carothers and the Nylon Legacy

http://www.chemheritage.org/EducationalServices/nylon/nylon.html

Although a lot of the material in this website is at a high level, it is worth looking at for some more background information on Wallace Carothers and the story of how he developed nylon.


NASA Spacelink

http://spacelink.nasa.gov/index.html

This part of the NASA website is full of educational resources. It contains lots of information about space, including news about the latest space exploration missions.


The Royal Society of Chemistry

http://www.rsc.org./

The RSC is the largest organisation in Europe for advancing the chemical sciences. The chemical industry is one of Britain's most profitable industrial sectors but its continuing strength depends on the strategic support of a strong science base. The RSC has a central role to play in fostering an effective partnership between industry and academia. This website is a very useful tool to learn about the Society’s work.

Chemistry Societies network

http://www.chemsoc.org

This is the website for the RSC’s science network, a large and varied group of organisations linked together by their research, practice and use of scientific knowledge in every day life. The website offers great insight into what companies and organisations really do, and can help you make the connections between theory and practice.

Chapter 9: Speeding up

http://www.iaaf.org

From the homepage use the left hand link to statistics to access details of the latest world records for each of the various categories of athletics. The figures you find can be used in speed calculations, like the one in Chapter 9 of your textbook.

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