Zooniverse is a website run by the Citizen Science Alliance, a group that works to help average citizens and scientists work together to solve science problems. They collaborate with real professional scientists to put projects on the Zooniverse website that are both interesting for average citizens but also genuinely useful for scientific research. This usually involves cases where scientists have a large amount of data (gigabytes, terabytes, or more) that computers cannot classify, such as pictures, sounds, or other unstructured data. For example, on Zooniverse you can classify pictures of galaxies, pictures from the ocean floor, or sounds made by whales and bats.
Scientists use this site to get their research data classified so they can make scientific discoveries. Average citizens, including our fourth graders, use it learn more about science, make meaningful contributions to science, and hopefully have some fun. Check out zooniverse.org to do your part to learn about and help science.
