Tuition may be going up every year, but there's a free, informal self-paced education and some fascinating viewing awaiting anyone with Internet access and time to cruise the University of Arizona's thousands of science Internet pages.
Looking for tips on a science project or just stunning screen wallpaper for your computer? You may even be able to find help with math homework or with work around the home.
The College of Agriculture and Life Science home page's "Extension Outreach" link offers information that can be useful to gardeners trying to identify garden critters: cals.arizona.edu/extension."
Speaking of agriculture, visit "Tomatoes Live!" at the Controlled Environment Agriculture Center Internet site to see something of hydroponic plant life at the UA's greenhouses on North Campbell Avenue via webcam.
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The math department's staid site isn't going to dispel preconceptions about math being dull. But there are useful aspects. Among other things, it offers information on the department-sponsored math homework outreach program in Tucson.
The physics department's site is much more attractive than math's. Though it probably won't cause a stampede of wannabe physics majors, it does make a strong attempt at explaining what's going on in UA physics research — in terms nonphysicists can understand.
Among the featured articles is one on UA researchers' explanation of how icicles grow.
There's a link to the UA's Accelerator Mass Spectrometry Laboratory, which at least answers the question of what one does with such a device (radiocarbon dating, such as dating the Dead Sea Scrolls).
The College of Optical Sciences, probably the best-known of UA's science programs, has a somber Web site that includes some interesting links.
There's an "Optics for Kids" link that includes directions for teachers who want to build a kaleidoscope.
The Biology Project is probably the most highly regarded of all the UA's science-related sites. It offers information for all, from kindergarten to curious adult of any age.
Probably more than any other site, it offers a self-paced education, right down to testing after sections. There are units on biochemistry, DNA, the cell cycle and mitosis, immunology, you name it.
Sometimes, even a webmaster with a deep understanding of his site's subject matter must send users elsewhere, said Doug Cromey, in charge of the Cellular Imaging Core Net site in the UA's Southwest Environmental Health Sciences Center.
Cromey said he took a site-building class offered by the UA library and started building the site 11 years ago, at first mainly compiling links to sites that had something to offer UA undergrads and grad students who needed to use and learn something about microscopes.
He said there were a lot of sites "out there" on the Internet that had useful information, and a lot that just said, "We have all these fancy microscopes."
"I thought, what if we put them all in one place? A list that was vetted by someone who knew what they were doing."
He further sorts the links by asking himself continually, "What kind of things do grad students need to know?"
"I try to keep the audience in mind," Cromey said.
He said he thinks he's been successful, as the site last year racked up 180,000 hits.
Marti Lindsey, outreach director of the Southwest Environmental Health Sciences Center, said there are specific things her section's Internet pages are trying to accomplish.
"I think we've gotten past the novelty of having a Web site," Lindsey said.
Putting a human face on science pages is part of the effort to get off-campus viewers to see it as a place they might want to be, Lindsey said. But one of the goals for the outreach pages is to attract grad students.
"Ultimately, it's the people who do the science and make the discoveries. Scientists are real people with real lives," she said.
Some UA science sites go far beyond documenting the work faculty and students perform, they show the human side of science — and the scientists.
Many feature shots of faculty members, researchers and students in the field, like snapshots from summer camp.
Assistant ecology and evolutionary biology professor Alexander Badyaev's award-winning site site gives viewers a look at the person behind the title.
His link to his "Ten Best Photographs" shows off his photographic skills. His wildlife shots wouldn't look out of place in National Geographic.
And some of the links from his pages, such as the one to his lab group, make field work look like more fun than spring break in Cancun.
"It's not propaganda," said Badyaev, 38. "Ideally, the people who are in the lab and work in the lab enjoy what they are doing. It kind of conveys that."
Mouse click on the filmstrip-like photos of his students and they change to a second photograph and take one to a linked page dedicated to the student, with a biography and information on their work, as well as more photos.
Elsewhere on the department of ecology and evolutionary biology's site, there are links to bird, fish, shell and other zoological photo collections.
Like bugs, or want to torture someone who doesn't? The department of entomology's site and its linked "What's Bugging You in Arizona" site could cause itching and nightmares.
The main page can also link you to Carl "Bug Man" Olson, the UA's associate curator for insects, well-known as Tucson's bug identification expert.
It's no surprise that the UA's Lunar & Planetary Laboratory and Steward Observatory sites are rich with striking photos, as the university is probably best known for imaging of one sort or another — space cameras, telescopes, optical science breakthroughs.
LPL's new Phoenix Mars Mission site (click on the "Phoenix Project" link on the right side of the main page) is probably the most feature-packed campus home page, and it hasn't even launched. There's a clock counting off the seconds to its planned August launch and blogs documenting various project scientists' work.
But the low-tech human element is Phoenix Mars Mission webmaster Jesse Cornia's favorite part.
He said the project's blogs, which feature first-person updates from six Phoenix Mars Mission project members, take viewers behind the scenes leading up to the planned launch.
The Phoenix Mission page was attracting 500 to 700 new visitors a day even before its late-December makeover.
Since the page is linked from NASA's flashy site, Cornia said he has to comply with NASA design rules, which include making it "508-compliant" — a feature to make it usable by people with disabilities.
"We wanted to have just one page for the mission," Cornia said. The answer, he said, was make it a good enough page "that they don't design one for us."
Another recent addition is "From Earth to Mars" (on the right side of the Phoenix Mars Mission page), an interactive history of Mars exploration that includes the Soviet Union's unsuccessful Marsnik 1 in 1960, the first shot by Earthlings at a Mars flyby.
NASA's site uses plenty of images captured by UA imaging gear. The NASA site lives up to the image of a web — you can become trapped for hours (days?) tunneling into links from the NASA home page, going from the latest projects back to the Gemini days.
The NASA site has a special kids section, including a feature that lets viewers send virtual postcards to the International Space Station crew.
Links to many of the UA Web sites mentioned in this story are available at www.azstarnet.com/metro
