I must confess that I have neglected school children in this column so far. Determined to rectify this mistake, I started searching for a suitable site, especially for my younger friends.

Then I came across this website, www.sciencegems.com, which promises ?great links to great science resources?. The site claims to have more than 14,000 such resources, which are categorised, subcategorised and even graded. In addition to the school-going students, this site also caters to ?? parents, teachers, scientists, engineers and mathematicians?.

Now, there is a box for your searches, in which you can key in your query and press the ?search? button, like you do in any normal search engine. I tried it with one of the most common subjects in science ? Einstein?s works. The new page directed me to more than 14 web links on the subject. The links were sorted according to the percentage of relevance, which was indicated by a figure on the left-hand side. For example, ?Frank Potter?s Science Gems - Physical Science III? was awarded 100 per cent relevance while ?Martindale?s Physics Centre Courses, Databases, Movies? scored only 20 per cent.

What really impressed me was the ?schoolbag-feel? about this site. The different sections are well sorted into physical science I, II and III, earth science I and II, and so on. This makes them seem like different textbooks. And what?s more, the sub-sections are each marked according to their relevant ages.

So what?s keeping you from logging on to www.sciencegems.com? Who knows, perhaps you?ll soon discover that spark of genius within yourself!

Monojit DasGupta

monojit@abpmail.com