University professor Richard Hammond (Physics Today, February 2001, page 14) says he was unable
to use the Internet to obtain information on the element europium for his daughter's school project. Curious,
I also tried a search, using Metacrawler, and it yielded 55 results. I scanned through the titles and quickly located several promising sites. In case Hammond's daughter is still interested, the first one
I tried was http://www.klbproductions.com/yogi/periodic/Eu.html which gave a brief summary of europium's chemical and physical properties, atomic structure, and even its history of discovery. In less than five minutes I accomplished what would have taken me at least an hour in the pre-Internet days of driving over to the local campus library, thumbing through a card catalog, and walking down rows of book shelves. The answer to Hammond's question, "Is the Web a valuable source of knowledge or a glitzy new form of yellow pages?" is yes and yes.
While I agree with many of Richard Hammond's reservations about the Internet as a universal tool for learning and teaching, his example of finding only the price for europium from an Internet search indicates a failure on his
part to use it even moderately well. A search using Google led quickly
to http://www.webelements.com/webelements/elements/text/Eu/key.html, which gives history, uses, geology, biology, reactions, compounds, bond enthalpies, and so on. This site contains enough information to keep any student occupied
for quite a while. Indeed, I've bookmarked it for my own further use.
This is just the kind of question that the Web is very good at answering, and in my experience, information can be found on just about any subject, whether it's "Where is the fluorine atom in fluorene?" (answer nowhere; there isn't any) or "What is the current phone number for that motel I stayed at 10 years ago in Green Valley Lake?"
Yes, it takes some ingenuity to select search parameters judiciously, and yes you can get a lot of chaff with the wheat on some subjects, but I've been pleasantly surprised at how useful the Internet is.
Where I think we probably agree is in the assertion that simply having access to the Internet is no substitute for critical thinking and enough general knowledge that one can evaluate information intelligently.
Hammond replies: I would like to thank John Wheeler and Steven Ryan for their suggestions about searching on the Internet. My search for europium, while a real one, was meant to be taken metaphorically. Physicists can avoid most hazards on the Internet, but when material is dispensed freely without formal review or refereeing, our students can be vulnerable targets to misinformation and, plainly, junk. I did another search, this time using Google. Moving up the periodic table, I chose silver, and the results were even worse than those for europium. I found everything for sale, from thermal products to machines that make colloidal silver for snorting (and if you doubt the health benefits of this miraculous device, you can order the descriptive pamphlet for only $3.50). In summary let me reemphasize the value of the Internet when used as an appropriate tool in research and teaching, and warn again that its value is jeopardized by its growing commercialization.
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