Internet: Valuable Resource and Peddler

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.