In 1948, the National Bureau of Standards (now the National Institute of Standards and Technology--NIST) constructed a 4-meter-high by 12-meter-long outdoor wall in Washington, DC to answer questions concerning the durability of common American building stones used in monuments and commercial and government buildings. The wall has 2300 stones most of which have come from samples collected and displayed at the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia. For comparative purposes, there are unexposed specimens of the same stones in storage. The wall was moved (32-metric tons) to Gaithersburg, MD in 1977. Now, with an online site you can visit the wall: http://stonewall.nist.gov. It includes a growing database on the individual stones it holds and eventually will include detailed petrologic studies relating each stone's mineralogical and texture attributes to is weathering and durability performance and pictures of well-known buildings constructed with specific stones will be available.

The Career Guide for Atmospheric Sciences comprises the educational requirements, career opportunities, scholarships, universities, job market, and more. The guide can be obtained by writing to the American Meteorological Society, 45 Beacon St., Boston, MA 02108-3693, or it can be downloaded from the Web site.

Earthguide is an educational website with a focus on earth, environmental, and oceanographic sciences, and global change.

This website is dedicated to raising awareness of the science of our world and our place in it. It provides essays, challenges, a forum for discussion, and fictional stories related to the Earth and Space Sciences.

Free educational resources are available for teachers of Minnesota geology from the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (DNR), Minerals Division. Details of the publications and how to order them are given on their Web site; check under Minerals, and Publications and Educational Materials