May 15, 2006 (Vol. 26, No. 10)

URL:
http://www.johnkyrk.com

Rating:
Strong Points: Informative animations
Weak Points: Uneven

Summary:
ou want quirky? OK. Start with the title of this educational site. I’m not quite sure what it means. It certainly doesn’t describe (at least as I see it) the contents of the site, which are animations relevant to cell biology. Topic areas include amino acids/proteins, cell function overview, cell anatomy, cell membranes, chromosome structure, glycolysis, evolution, and more. Each of these uses animations to illustrate the various principles. The site scores points for its clever uses of an expanding calendar for showing the universe, beginning at 14 billion years ago to the present, but loses points for inaccuracies (the section entitled DNA makes RNA is misleading in places and wrong in other places—there are more than 64 tRNAs, for example, as well as more than two rRNAs). In places the videos are very informative, for example, translation, and in other places, like evolution, the motion just seems to get in the way.

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