Wolfram|Alpha, Jupiter's Galilean moons, Dante's resources & new e-book

[Nostromics Newsletter]

Nostromics Newsletter

Nostromics science gifts product news, educational resources & science tidbits

Nostromics Newsletter, 3 November 2010 - You are welcome to share this mail

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The Wolfram|Alpha computational engine

Wolfram|Alpha is an online computational knowledge engine developed by Wolfram Research, the company that created the popular mathematics software Mathematica. The site provides a text box in which you enter a query like a traditional search engine such as Google. Queries are scientific computations expressed in natural language. The engine returns the results of the computations or database lookups.

Wolfram|Alpha may seem intimidating at first because it is not clear how to formulate a query. But if you click the Examples by Topic link on the home page, you will get a handy categorized list of sample queries grouped by topic such as Mathematics, Physics, Astronomy, Money & Finance, Dates & Times and many more. Once you select a topic and find a relevant query, click it to see the result.

Try it!

The Galilean moons of Jupiter

The Nostromics Io Cylindrical Map Mug features a map of Io, one of the Galilean moons of Jupiter discovered by Galileo Galilei in 1609: Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto. We have similar products showing Io and other Galilean satellites, see for example the Io stackable mug set or beer stein in the Solar System section of Nostromics Store.

These objects are satellites because they orbit a planet, but they are interesting worlds in their own. 400 active volcanoes make Io the most geologically active body in the Solar System. Europa may have a water ocean beneath its smooth icy surface (Europa mugs). With a diameter of 5,268 km, Ganymede is the largest planetary moon and is slightly larger than planet Mercury (Ganymede mugs and gifts). Callisto, which is slightly smaller than Mercury, has an old, heavily cratered surface (Callisto mugs).

More science gifts and products at Nostromics Store.

Online Dante's astronomy resources and a new e-book

Our astronomy educator friend Monica Aimone is writing an e-book about astronomy and science in the works of Dante Alighieri, the great Italian medieval poet. The book will collect the material she covers in her lectures on the topic at the Planetarium of Milan, Italy, where she has been working for over a dozen years.

Monica's upcoming book, titled Sotto i cieli di Dante (Under Dante's skies), will be distributed as a free e-book at the Nostromics site. We will initially publish it in Italian, and an English edition will follow. In the meantime, we have created a page with links to selected online resources on Dante's astronomy and cosmology.

-- Paolo Amoroso & Mauro Arpino (Nostromics), science educators - Milan, Italy