Curious Minds   is an online science shop featuring a wide range of Science, Nature, Space, & Technology products, toys, kits, and gifts vetted for scientific integrity by our helpful & friendly ex-NASA/HST staff. We have ant farms, chemistry sets, electronics kits, glass prisms, gyroscopes, home planetariums, maths mugs, Newton's cradles, orreries, praxinoscopes, solar radiometers, solar system models & mobiles, triops, & much more • See our clearance items & special offers & latest products. When you talk to or email us, you don't get someone who doesn't know or care. We return your calls. We make sure you get the best service we can offer. We go the extra light year for you!

• ScienceCam - live view of products (if it says Offline just refresh the page).
• Try the PicLens Lite slideshow (JavaScript). Install the PicLens addon (Firefox, IE, or Safari browsers), then reload this page and launch PicLens for a cool full-screen, 3D experience!
• View our product pictures page. This is one large page with no categories. Click on any picture to go to the product information page.
• Visit the Curious Minds section of our Kosmoi Photography site. These pictures are in several categorised pages, but aren't linked to the product information pages.

We'd like you to feel as comfortable in our online shop as you would in a physical shop, and to know that we not only know our products, but also the subjects they are concerned with - be it science, technology, or nature. If you want to know if a product is suitable for a certain age, or for learning about some subject, or is very entertaining - don't hesitate! Call us on 01989 76 33 71, email us (info[at]curiousminds.co.uk), or send us a letter (address follows) - whatever you're comfortable with! If you have a science or technical question, ask for Alan; for anything else, ask for Lucy.

Address:
13 Kyrle Street
Ross-on-Wye
Herefordshire
HR9 7DB

Telephone number . 01989 76 33 71

We have an extensive background in scientific computing, and we (Alan and Lucy) met in 1988 while developing archival software for the Hubble Space Telescope. Alan was at the Space Telescope Coordinating Facility in Germany, Lucy was at the Space Telescope Science Institute in the USA.

Alan Richmond was a software developer for several international scientific research institutes & projects, e.g. the Hubble Space Telescope. He started building web sites from almost the beginning of the web, in 1993 for NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center (near Washington, DC). He founded the Web Developer's Virtual Library, the web's first commercial web site for web developers. He founded EncycloZine, the web's first XHTML site, in November 1998. Alan has also worked on nuclear fusion and fission devices and a synchrotron (a powerful X-ray research machine). Alan has also been a science teacher, and home educated his sons in science.

Lucy Richmond has a BA in English from Birmingham-Southern College in Birmingham, Alabama, and an MBA in Management from Georgia State University, in Atlanta, Georgia. Her first job was as a Technical Editor but she quickly got into computer programming and has over 12 years of programming experience. Before starting her family, she was first a Database Specialist and later the STSDAS Software Systems Administrator for The Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland.