Marcus Webb 
Disclosure: Some links on ScienceBases are affiliate links, which means we may earn a commission if you buy through them. That never changes what we recommend or how we score it — see “How we assessed this” below for the method behind every rating. Comparing mel science vs kiwico comes up constantly, and the honest … Read more
Disclosure: Some links on ScienceBases are affiliate links, which means we may earn a commission if you buy through them. That never changes what we recommend or how we score it — see “How we assessed this” below for the method behind every rating. The best robotics kits for kids do one thing that separates … Read more
Disclosure: Some links on ScienceBases are affiliate links, which means we may earn a commission if you buy through them. That never changes what we recommend or how we score it — see “How we assessed this” below for the method behind every rating. Shopping for the best chemistry sets for kids means filtering out … Read more
Disclosure: Some links on ScienceBases are affiliate links, which means we may earn a commission if you buy through them. That never changes what we recommend or how we score it — see “How we assessed this” below for the method behind every rating. The best science kits for teens have one thing in common: … Read more
Disclosure: Some links on ScienceBases are affiliate links, which means we may earn a commission if you buy through them. That never changes what we recommend or how we score it — see “How we assessed this” below for the method behind every rating. Searching for the best science kits for toddlers runs into an … Read more
Shopping for the best microscopes for students? The first thing to know is that the big number on the box is nearly meaningless. Manufacturers advertise “1200x magnification” on instruments that produce a blurry mess past 400x. What determines whether you see anything useful is optical quality and lighting, not the claimed zoom. How we assessed … Read more
Disclosure: Some links on ScienceBases are affiliate links, which means we may earn a commission if you buy through them. That never changes what we recommend or how we score it — see “How we assessed this” below for the method behind every rating. Looking for the best notetaking apps for students? We compared seven … Read more
How do search engines work? Three stages, executed continuously at absurd scale: crawl the web, index what was found, then rank the matches for your query. Critically, you are not searching the live web — you are searching a stored copy that a crawler built, which is why new pages do not appear instantly. Stage … Read more
What is an algorithm? A finite sequence of unambiguous steps that takes an input and produces an output. That is it. A recipe is an algorithm. So is the long division you learned in school, and so is the procedure for sorting a deck of cards. The word sounds intimidating because it gets used loosely … Read more
How does GPS work? Your phone receives radio signals from several satellites, each one stamped with the exact time it was sent. Compare send time to receive time, multiply by the speed of light, and you know how far away each satellite is. Do that with enough satellites and there is only one point on … Read more