Pathfinder

Activity 1 - Information Access and Web 2.0

In Mod 5 I outlined a problem were the students must identify three optical phenomena based on vague descriptions that lay people might convey to a reporter of a newspaper. The students themselves are not familiar with the phenomena and must do some searching to identify and develop an explanation for each phenomenon. So I tried to conduct my searches in a manner the students might try. Here are the results.


**** http://alltheweb.com
Search terms - sun phenomenon

Sample Results:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_phenomenon

Gives a nice list of optical phenomena and includes short descriptions and photographs of several phenomena. Many new search terms can be generated from this site.

http://www.astrophys-assist.com/wilobs/weathwin/sundog.htm

Contains photos and a description of “sun dogs”, this is one of the optical effects the students are looking for. This site does not contain an explanation of the effect. No adds on this site.

**** http://www.altavista.com/web/adv
Search terms – sky optics

Sample Results:

http://www.atoptics.co.uk/halosim.htm

A science oriented site, there are no adds. Contains many links to numerous optical effects. Contains explanations of the effects. Contains a searchable index that leads to many other good resources.

http://mintaka.sdsu.edu/GF/index.html

Contains an outstanding explanation of the “green flash” and photos.

**** http://www.ask.com

Search terms – green flash, sunset

Sample Results:

http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/atmos/redsun.html

Contains nice photos and simple but effective ray diagrams that help explain the phenomena. Science oriented site – no adds.

http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a5_061.html

More of a lay persons explanation of the phenomena. Has some good comments but lacks a good explanation for the uniformed and no photos.

**** http://www.exalead.com/search/C=0/?2p=1

Search terms - sun pillars

http://ww2010.atmos.uiuc.edu/(Gh)/guides/mtr/opt/ice/sp.rxml

Science oriented site. Nice photos and contains a very sparse explanation of the phenomena.

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2002/06may_pillar.htm

Nice NASA site. Contains it all - photos and explanations. The bonus is the site shows the phenomena is not restricted to the sun.

http://www.gi.alaska.edu/ScienceForum/ASF7/790.html

A limited site. Contains one poor quality picture and a very wordy explanation.

**** http://www.google.com/advanced_search

Search terms – refraction, reflection, light, optical sky phenomenon (just for the fun of it)

http://science.jrank.org/pages/612/Atmospheric-Optical-Phenomena.html

Contains a list of many phenomena with links to each. The links lead to limited explanations and no photos.

http://www.auf.asn.au/meteorology/section12.html

An extensive Australian science oriented site that contains good explanations for most phenomena. No photos!

http://ww2010.atmos.uiuc.edu/(Gh)/guides/mtr/opt/home.rxml

Science oriented site with brief explanations and links to more extensive explanations and photos.

http://www.cityes.org/natural-phenomena-in-geology.html

Boooo for this site. Contains hard to follow explanations of phenomena. This site seems to be designed to catch younger web surfers so they will view and click the advertisement.

**** http://www.ditto.com/default.aspx

Search term – sun pillars

http://www.ditto.com/searchResults.aspx

A site that contains only photos. First type in sun pillars. Click on a photo and it leads to the original site that contains the photo. Some photos do not contain a sun pillar, so a person must have some background knowledge to use the search results effectively.


If I used a good combination of key words all of the search engines I tried returned good results. Even a poor selection of key words would usually return results that could be used to generate a better selection of key words. Two search engines gave me the poorest results, if poor key words were used in Ask.com and ditto.com, the results were almost useless. Neither one seemed to give a hint of what I was looking for if I started with a poorly selected key word search. However if I improved the key word search, than the results were good or very good.