17. Nature

With our head down using a mobile device, we might miss the rest of creation. The apps in this chapter make us lift our eyes to look in wonder—and with knowledge—at the sky above and the world around.

Or at least see if it’s raining outside.

ELEMENTS / WEATHER / SOLAR SYSTEM / STARS / SPACE

The Elements

$13.99 • Theodore Gray • http://5str.us/4p9

There’s antimony, arsenic, aluminum, selenium...and over a hundred more

Science geeks love the periodic table of the elements. Some even carry around a wallet-sized card in case there’s a sudden need to know the atomic weight of molybdenum (it’s 42).

What better way to demonstrate the range, depth, and capriciousness of the universe in which we live? The periodic table divides indivisible building blocks of existence (let’s ignore quarks and gluons for a moment) by how many electrons are required to fill a shell, and orders them by the number of protons in the nucleus (from least to greatest).

Theodore Gray, one of math software developer Wolfram Research’s founders, has spent an enormous amount of time, money, and effort collecting examples of every element that’s extant, and documenting them. (Some elements are created under high-energy conditions and have miniscule lifetimes before breaking down. These are obviously a bit hard to picture.)

He’s produced books, a Web site, and now a glorious app, one of the first available for the iPad when it was released. The app shows the periodic table with photography, information, and links to Wolfram Alpha (see p. 140) for additional data lookups.

As a teaching and learning tool, The Elements is marvelous, bringing dry mechanical facts into sharp color and live interaction.

For each element, you can see a large sample—as found in nature or manufactured into a product—of an item containing the element. That example can be swiped and tapped to spin and rotate in three dimensions around a single axis.

The main page reveals a host of information at a glance: the position of the element on a schematic color-coded periodic table at top; the atomic radius and organization of electrons in shells; the crystal structure (also in rotating 3D), with a description; and a number of statistics to define the element in relationship to the rest of the universe.

A set of colored lines across the right side from top to bottom represent the atomic emissions spectrum—the wavelengths emitted when an element is superheated.

On the detail page for the element, there are typically several other examples throughout well-written text; each of those images may also be rotated. Double-tap any image, and you get a side-by-side set which can be used with stereographic glasses. (Mr. Gray offers an inexpensive pair through his site for about $8 with shipping within the U.S.)

The app has stolen my heart because it opens with a song: 1950s–60s comic singer (and Harvard mathematician) Tom Lehrer’s “The Elements,” a rendition of all elements known in 1959, sung to the tune of a Gilbert and Sullivan song. The song is animated with each element appearing as Mr. Lehrer sings it.

For young scientists and those young at heart, hours can be whiled away examining the little things that make us up.

Star Walk

$4.99 • Vito Technology • http://5str.us/v7v

Take a magic window into the stars with you while you gaze

When sitting outside on a crisp, clear night, did you ever wish constellations and stars had labels? Star Walk fills that desire for folks like me who know a smattering of stars, but can only reliably find a few.

The app uses GPS and other positioning sensors to provide something like “augmented reality,” where the world around you is annotated with details. (Automatic positioning requires a compass sensor, which is built into all iPads.)

Hold an iPad up to the sky outside, and it’s like you have a true magic window. Constellations fade in automatically when you pause over a view. Tap any star, galaxy, or other feature, and you can then tap an information button to see a close-up with more detail.

Star Walk also has a remarkable fast-forward/rewind mode for moving through time as well as space. Tap part of the date, like the year, spin the dial by flicking up or down, and watch the stars move as if you were in an Einsteinian inertial frame of reference traveling at a fraction below the speed of light. You can also move in small increments.

A “local neighborhood” view shows you various details about the current phases of the moon, when planets appear in the sky, and sunrise and sunset.

There’s even a stereoscopic 3D mode, which requires inexpensive plastic-film glasses, for indoor viewing on cloudy nights.

Solar Walk

$2.99 • Vito Technology • http://5str.us/zr4

The accurately rotating solar system in 3D at a glance

Solar Walk presents the eight planets (sorry, Pluto) in all their glory as they revolve around each other, and collectively around the sun.

The orbits are shown as lines, while the planets are outsized in relation to each other for better visibility in many views. A planet can be rotated by tapping it to bring it into full view, and then dragging.

Tap a planet or any of the major moons orbiting Mars and beyond, and then tap an i icon, and a variety of detail about the heavenly body is shown. This includes its measurements to the composition of planetary layers to the probe missions that visited it.

A rocket ship button lets you zoom in on a planet or moon after tapping it. You can rotate the orbs you’re viewing, too, to see the current light and dark sides. Pinch, zooming, swiping, and dragging let you “walk” around the solar system.

As with Star Walk, you can tap a chronometer at the upper right, and use a dial to zoom through time while watching the planets move in relation to one another. This can aid in finding alignments or figuring out when a planet will be visible in the night sky.

Planets

FREE • Q Continuum • http://5str.us/hfb

An extraordinary amount of planetary data packed into a free app

The planets whirl around the Earth, and finding their current position can take an almanac, a Web site, or a trained eye. The Planets app helps you spot the other seven spheres through a few different aids, as well as view information about constellations, the sun, and Earth’s moon. (Pluto is dissed in this app as in Solar Walk, p. 163.)

Views of planets are divided into several tabs. The Visibility tab is the real gem, displaying all the planets, the moon, and the sun, with their rise and set times, and whether they are visible to the unaided eye or not. A red vertical marks the current time.

A Sky 2D tab shows the current position of the planets and sun in a plane; during the day, only the sun is shown. A Sky 3D tab can be oriented around your view of the horizon, and shows constellations, too. You can drag to pan and pinch, and expand to see more or focus in.

If you’re exceptionally geeky, a slider of labels at the top lets you see the sky via X-ray, infrared, radio, hydrogen, and microwave telescope data.

The Globes tab adds 3D, rotating low-resolution versions of the moon and eight planets, with an option to set them spinning, or pinch to zoom in.

NASA

FREE • NASA • http://5str.us/22g

The universe of NASA missions just a tap away

NASA junkies may need to avoid this app, because it’s chock full of every last bit of NASA’s active missions. I can take an historic trip and review Voyager details—the Voyager 1 and 2 probes are still going, billions of miles away—or hop to the present and see yesterday’s downloaded video from the Chandra X-Ray Observatory.

The main page of the app lets you search or scroll through missions. You can tap a filter button to restrict missions to specific areas of study, like the moon and Mars. Tabs for images, videos, updates, and NASA TV show the latest in all those areas.

Tap on a mission, and you dive into the specifics of that endeavor. News, images, and video are all related to the project. An alarm clock tab shows the launch date and time and duration mission duration.

When viewing photos, you can opt to share via Facebook, Twitter, or email, or you can save the image to your Camera Roll. Videos can be shared, too.

For mission that orbit our globe, an earth icon appears at lower left on the mission page. Tap it, and you can see the satellite’s track and current position.

WeatherBug Elite

$0.99 • WeatherBug • http://5str.us/znv

Get detailed weather maps, forecasts, and webcam views

WeatherBug relies on tens of thousands of weather stations it’s placed around the country to provide local weather reports and forecasts. These stations also let you see the current weather conditions through a webcam picture and an animation of several pictures from the last few hours. (Yes, it’s not so useful at night, and a surprising number of cameras point at parking lots.)

The app is well designed in both of its separate iPhone/iPod touch and iPad versions, providing ready access to local weather station results, forecasts from the National Weather Service, and short videos updating current local conditions.

Although you can use WeatherBug solely to look up weather on demand, the app is most useful when you add locations. You can enter a city, state, or zip, and then add to a list you can swipe through.

For a given location, you can see current conditions, a forecast (by hour or for the next seven days), and view maps with selectable overlays of temperature, radar, and other conditions. You can also view a current video report on U.S. weather shot like a television weather segment.

WeatherBug’s iPad version put all this information at a glance; the edition for the smaller screen requires a few taps.

AccuWeather

FREE • AccuWeather • http://5str.us/4md

Quick glance at weather in places you define

AccuWeather presents the temperature attractively. The ad-supported free app can determine your current location to deliver weather information, and you can also enter locations you want to track.

The main display lets you swipe through multiple locations and then drill down to hourly and 15-day forecasts. The app’s maps can cycle through recent precipitation radar overlays, so that you can see where rain and snow are headed.

The app includes links to the many regularly updated video reports created by AccuWeather; this includes regional reports.

The app offers weather alarms, which are local warnings of upcoming rain, snow, and other storms; and alerts, which are weather service reports for severe conditions.

The Weather Channel Max

$3.99 • The Weather Channel • http://5str.us/wc2

Highly focused reports on each area

The Weather Channel’s app provides fine forecasting information, but it’s best in two other areas: maps and video.

The Map tab lets you use location to pull up information about your current area. The i button brings up Explore Map settings which can be highly customized. You can opt for different landmarks to be shown (schools, airports, parks, and so forth) to put pins in the map that you can tap for a very local temperature. The app also lets you choose among overlay layers like 24-hour rainfall and UV Index.

Because The Weather Channel produces massive amounts of reports every day, the app provides highly localized and up-to-date video for each area you’ve set up to track. Tap the Video link, and the latest minute-or-so report for your area is pulled up.